An alliance to accelerate creation of smart hospitals through use of advanced technologies has been established. The Alliance for Smart Healthcare Excellence will host the Smart Hospital Maturity Model (SMHH). This was originally conceived by care.ai, now a part of Stryker, and developed with help from the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).

The SHMM incorporates a survey that assesses the level of smart care adoption by hospitals. The survey consists of 89 questions and evaluates: humans (patients, clinicians, and support staff); environments (clinical care spaces); and processes (workflow optimisation).

“Our vision when we launched the SHMM earlier this year was for industry leaders to help define the smart hospital and subsequently assess current state and align on the journey ahead across peer health systems”, said Chakri Toleti, Founder & CEO of care.ai, now Vice President of Digital Innovation at Stryker.  “To optimise adoption and ensure comprehensive objectivity, we are excited for this vision to be fulfilled through this new, independent, nonprofit organisation”.

“It is important that the Smart Hospital Maturity Model (SHMM) is vendor agnostic and free of commercial influence,” said Lieber, former CEO of HIMSS and former Chief Analytics Officer of CHIME. “The SHMM is an important tool for healthcare providers to understand where they are on the journey to smart healthcare, and it is critical that this tool be viewed as an independent effort.”

To date, over 170 hospitals have completed the survey, which is now open to any health system interested in evaluating its technological readiness and position within the Smart Hospital Maturity Model. Preliminary results from the survey are being shared today at the CHIME Fall Forum in San Diego.

“Many health system leaders are increasingly confused by the industry noise around AI and other rapidly emerging technologies. This new alliance will help us all begin to define a smart care facility and how institutions can pinpoint opportunities to progress towards an integrated experience for patients and providers,” said Roberta Schwartz, Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer of Houston Methodist.