With new hospitals come new data centers

Silver Cross Hospital’s recently opened data center puts it at the forefront of an emerging healthcare trend, according to Mortensen Construction, a company with hospital projects across the country. Combining construction of new hospitals with new data centers is becoming more common, according to company executives.

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The trend is driven, they say, by the need to accommodate an explosion in applications and patient data – not only documents, but also images and videos.

With the February, 2012 opening of its 600,000 square foot, $370 million medical complex with outpatient center, medical service building and hospital, Silver Cross Hospital, a 289-room facility in New Lenox, Ill., needed to update and expand its aging data resources, which were already operating at capacity. So, the project also included a new 2,450 square-foot data center, 50 percent larger than its existing one.

[See also: Green data storage saves millions for Oregon hospital]

Silver Cross also became one of the first hospitals to install patient tracking software so families know where a patient is at all times. New communication equipment supports wireless voice and data networks throughout the hospital, providing access to patients and their families while freeing clinicians to use phones and computers where needed instead of based on location. Also, medical telemetry enables remote monitoring of patient vital signs.

“From day one, the new capabilities have helped us improve care and have helped our medical staff to be more effective,” said Kevin Lane, Silver Cross vice president and CIO.

Other hospitals, including OSF HealthCare’s new Children’s Hospital of Illinois in Peoria and the soon-to-open Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, have combined new data centers with new medical facilities. As Mortenson executives see it, the hospitals are establishing a technology foundation for the emerging era in healthcare that will be dominated by electronic health records and new care delivery approaches that require real-time coordination and information exchange among multiple providers, payers, patients and locations.