Building smart hospitals with myriad technologies

Dr Cheng Hung-kai
Consultant
Tseung Kwan O Hospital

Dr Cheng Hung-kai, a senior anaesthesiologist, has devoted himself to promoting the ‘Three-tier Pre-admission Clinic Service Model’ to enhance the role of specialty nurses in peri-operative care. In recent years, with the spirit of ‘where there’s a will, there’s a way’, Dr Cheng has collaborated with colleagues from the Information Technology and Health Informatics Division of the Head Office and the hospital to develop smart hospitals. In the past few years, he took the lead in introducing a few tech-savvy systems such as OT Smart Dashboard and Autocharting (Vitals) System in Ambulatory Surgery Centre of Tseung Kwan O Hospital, which have brought greater convenience in clinical diagnosis and management for both colleagues and patients.

He explains that the OT Smart Dashboard can display and analyse the utilisation of operating theatres and medical equipment inside, as well as the instant key performance indicators, offering a more efficient means to review and investigate the root cause of problem compared to manual documentation. Besides, the system also features the display of the real-time job allocation of clinical staff and statistics of their experiences in operations, which largely facilitate division of jobs.

Autocharting (Vitals) System can automatically record patient’s vital sign, such as electrocardiography and pulses, which will be instantly transferred to the server so that the clinical staff can remotely monitor patient’s condition through computer or tablet. This would strengthen the safety and quality of care.

Dr Cheng reveals that these systems will be promoted to other hospitals. He hopes that the use of 5G could facilitate the development of telecare services and bring medical experts and patients closer, and enable cross-cluster treatment that benefits more patients.