Hospital 4.0 roadmap: an agile implementation guideline for hospital manager

Abstract

Social and economic developments, such as the progressive aging of society or rigorous budgetary policies, combined with the latest unforeseen outbreak of the pandemic COVID-19 have shown the fragility of healthcare systems. Today more than ever, concepts like flexibility, agility and efficiency assume significance also for the design of healthcare systems. To increase agility and robustness of healthcare systems, this paper presents an implementation approach for Hospital 4.0 based on a profound analysis of scientific literature about Industry 4.0 and Hospital 4.0 and aims to provide a practice oriented guideline for hospital manager. The proposed roadmap is based on six phases starting with an assessment and ending with the long-term sustainable innovation and development process of future oriented Hospital 4.0 concepts. The main findings of this research is the transfer of Industry 4.0 guidelines to healthcare, leading to a comprehensive roadmap for the development and implementation of Hospital 4.0 strategies.