Health 4.0 for South Tyrol

The hospital in Bolzano is to become a pioneer for “Digitalization in Hospitals” so that in the future high quality care for patients can be guaranteed as well as simultaneously achieving a competitive advantage. The first step in attaining this goal is the commissioning of a new building for emergency and acute medicine in late 2018.

UNITY's first task was to work with doctors, nurses, medical engineers, construction planners and IT staff of the South Tyrolean Healthcare Service to develop a vision for a hospital of the future in South Tyrol. More than 100 trends from the clinical environment were evaluated and identifi ed for the central hospital in Bolzano through workshops and interviews. One important fi nding of the workshops was that, in particular, the networking of the sectors offers opportunities for new business models and a better provision of services to citizens. Thus, it is not only a matter of “Hospital 4.0,” rather it is more about the topic of “Health 4.0.”

In conclusion, an implementation roadmap was derived from the common vision.In addition, the vision was used to derive future demands on the infrastructure. In turn, the demands were used to evaluate the current construction plan with regard to its future viability, particularly the aspect of IT infrastructure. UNITY was able to provide valuable impulses in areas such as: distribution of mobile services, WLAN and Bluetooth infrastructure, which all have to be taken into account during the planning and construction phases of the hospital.