The first digital hospital in North America opened in Toronto, Canada on Sunday, Oct. 18. The Humber River Hospital offers advanced automated services, including robot servants and patient touchpads for maximum comfort customization.
The hospital located at the northwestern part of the city has 656 beds and boasts fully digital features and the most advanced technology available.
One of the many new offerings of the hospital is its radiology department that has three robots that can position the patient as appropriate during an X-ray procedure. With this, patients do not have to follow commands as the robot would be there to facilitate.
In the chemotherapy area, robots can also be found mixing drugs as prescribed by doctors and preparing it as appropriate, following dosage checks for each individual patient.
The medicines packaged by the robots will have a barcode, which will be scanned and checked by hospitals staff prior to patient administration. An advanced information management technology is also available at the hospital, enabling accurate counts, precise organization and checking of expiration dates of all medicines to ensure that all patients get the correct treatment.
Hospital hallways and even elevators will be seen with automated robots carrying around medical supplies for the health care team.
All hospital beds are equipped with touchpads that patients could use to view their records and medical charts, adjust room temperature according to their liking, make phone calls, play video games and watch television.
In the face of all the modern technology, the hospital said their facility remains environment-friendly as it has a "green" roof and utilizes a system that decreases energy consumption in the structure.
On the morning of the opening day, patients were moved from its old sites in Keele St., Finch Ave. W, and Church St. to the new location in Wilson Ave.
All in all, 351 patients were prepared, strapped to stretchers and wheelchairs and carefully transported to the new digital hospital.
"The patients are so excited, they've been up since 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., washed, dressed, and ready to go," said Carol Hatcher, coordinator of the Finch site move. She added that their day started at about 4:30 a.m. They reviewed the patient census, as well as the materials needed to safely move them.
The new hospital began taking in patients at around 6 a.m. on the same day.
The construction of the hospital commenced in 2011 and is said to have cost approximately $1.7 billion.
