Healthcare organizations are being asked to do more than ever. Improve patient experience. Support stretched care teams. Reduce operating costs. Advance sustainability goals. And do it all while building resilience for the future.
We’re finding that the organizations leading the way are not treating technology as a collection of separate systems. Instead, they are creating connected healthcare environments where people, buildings and data work together to improve outcomes.
At WSP, we help healthcare owners plan, design and integrate these ecosystems into practical digital strategies that can support better care.
Here are five areas where healthcare organizations are making strategic digital investments.
1. Reimagining the patient room
The patient room is no longer just a place for treatment. It is becoming an intelligent environment that enhances comfort, communication and care delivery. From room finishes to digital capabilities, patients are expecting hospital rooms that feel more like hotels.
Digital technologies can support:
- Connected patient-room controls
- Virtual consultations and remote monitoring
- Personalized educational and nutrition services
- Real-time translation and accessibility tools
- Automated communication and care coordination
The result is a more personalized and confidence-building patient journey, while caregivers gain greater situational awareness, clearer communication and more reliable handoffs.
Arthur M. Blank Hospital in Atlanta uses a real-time location system for medical equipment tracking, staff duress assistance and staff identification in patient rooms. When a clinician enters a patient’s room, they are identified by a pop-up message on the room’s digital screens. These capabilities help organizations create healthcare campuses that are safer, more welcoming and better prepared to adapt to changing needs.
2. Transforming building operations through intelligent automation
Modern healthcare facilities generate enormous amounts of operational data. The challenge is turning that information into actionable insights.
Connected building technologies enable:
- A shared data environment with one trusted source of information
- Unified operational dashboards and system visibility
- Building performance and energy optimization
- Predictive maintenance and fault detection
- Asset tracking and location intelligence
- Artificial intelligence-powered insights and decision support
At San Francisco International Airport (SFO), WSP engineered and managed the implementation of a digital connectivity strategy for the airport to unite their disparate facility control systems onto a converged network. This data formed the platform for energy analytics, trending and fault detection diagnostics. As a result, SFO achieved resource efficiency significant energy savings. By connecting disparate building systems, owners can move from reactive management to proactive operations, improving reliability, reducing costs and supporting continuity of care.
3. Treating data as a strategic asset
Healthcare organizations often struggle with fragmented information spread across disconnected clinical, operational and facility systems.
A strong digital foundation plan brings:
- Integrated and accessible facility and operational data
- Interoperable systems that support collaboration
- Secure information sharing across stakeholders
- Consistent data governance and tagging standards
- Scalable cybersecurity practices
- Role-based access to trusted information
When data becomes integrated and accessible, organizations can make faster decisions, improve collaboration and unlock new opportunities for innovation. For example, we led workshops with several stakeholder groups for a healthcare client in Canada to identify operational pain points due to disparate or missing data across the organization. These pain points were addressed through enhancing the journeys of various user personas. The result was a practical digital roadmap aligned with operational priorities, future procurement decisions and long-term investment planning.
4. Empowering care teams through smarter workflows
The quality of care is directly influenced by the efficiency of the systems supporting clinicians and staff behind the scenes. Further, labor and operational costs remain among the largest expenses for healthcare organizations, making efficiency critical.
Integrated digital solutions can help:
- Improve patient flow and room management
- Automate cleaning and infection-control processes
- Provide mobile access to critical information
- Prioritize alerts and streamline communication
- Support remote monitoring and virtual care
- Improve visibility of equipment and key assets
These capabilities help staff spend less time navigating systems and more time focused on what matters most: patient care.
We saw great success at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., where we led all aspects of technology engineering for their national telehealth command center. Critically, the facility integrated A/V technologies coupled with cybersecure high-speed resilient networking to create a powerful digital foundation for collecting, processing and displaying patient data for real-time decision making. As a result of these new workflows, the facility redefined hospital care for children with risky heart conditions.
5. Creating more responsive and resilient healthcare campuses
Public spaces, waiting areas, dining facilities, retail environments and other shared spaces play an important role in the overall healthcare experience. These areas enhance the experience for everyone in the facility, offer revenue opportunities for the hospital and encourage patients and families to return.
Connected technologies can scale to support:
- Digital wayfinding and navigation
- Dynamic space utilization and scheduling
- Energy optimization and sustainability goals
- Indoor air quality monitoring
- Remote building operations and control
- Predictive maintenance and operational resilience
During the master planning for two ambulatory care buildings for a cancer center in Texas, WSP developed digital user journeys for patients, visitors, care teams and engineering staff. These insights helped align future digital investments with the organization’s long-term vision for patient experience, operational performance and campus growth.
Design the digital hospital, not just the building
The future hospital is not defined by a single technology. It is defined by how people, places and data work together.
Healthcare organizations that invest in connected digital ecosystems today will be better positioned to deliver safer care, support their teams and adapt to changing demands tomorrow. Whether planning a new facility or modernizing an existing campus, the opportunity is clear: design the digital hospital alongside the physical one.
Learn more about how to unlock the full value of digital transformation across your healthcare projects.
