Digital health has proliferated across the entire healthcare system. Healthcare providers are rethinking the delivery of care. New digital platforms provide new opportunities for engagement, community, and equity. This, in turn, opens new possibilities to design new experiences, rethink real estate, and focus on the role of physical sites. This is an unprecedented opportunity to reconsider care delivery through the lens of human experience.

The pandemic has put an emphasis on how the healthcare system and its environments need to become both customized and more flexible. To achieve this, providers can leverage new technologies for touchless care and engagement. They can also use new physical models for care that reduce or eliminate waiting and focus the physical resource on the human-centered experience of care. Healthcare can be more personal and therefore more effective.

The pandemic has highlighted disparities in receiving care. Whether due to structural injustice or fear of infection, patients are delaying or canceling interactions with the health system — including receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. Providers must understand individuals’ emotional states throughout their care journeys and customize environments — physical and digital — to provide support.

The pandemic exposed the inflexibility in current healthcare settings. We can remedy this by making the most complex healthcare settings flexible and improving human experience and staff performance simultaneously. With convertible patient rooms, multifunctional post-anesthesia care unit (PACU) and emergency department (ED) beds, and reduced waiting space, the physical environment becomes malleable to meet the demands of patients and staff. Repurposing underutilized space can offer additional flexibility when a surge occurs. Modular construction will also facilitate seamless flexibility and growth over time.

Intelligent technologies can make hospitals safer and more effective for patients and staff. Automated systems and sensors can give hospital operators a more holistic picture of what’s occurring in the space — such as crowding or a potential contagion — and enable them to rapidly respond. Infrared fever-detection sensors and other automated technologies can help hospitals quickly and safely respond to an immediate need, make a change, address a patient need, or improve performance. Healthcare providers need to leverage new and existing technologies to realize success in an uncertain future. Intelligent hospitals can reduce risk and help providers advance their positions in the communities they serve.