A smart hospital is a healthcare facility where clinical, operational, and infrastructure data are collected, integrated, and turned into informed decisions, from diagnosis and internal logistics to facility management and the patient experience. It’s not simply a hospital “filled with technology”, but an organization designed to be data-driven from the planning stage onward.
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What does “smart hospital” mean?
Smart hospital is a facility where the building, staff, and medical devices are connected within a single ecosystem. What sets it apart from a hospital that is merely digitalized is integration. In many healthcare facilities, IT systems (information technology), OT systems (operational technology), and MT systems (medical technology) operate in separate silos and cannot communicate with one another. In a smart hospital, they can.
According to Siemens’ vision of the smart hospital, it is an organization where all relevant data are analyzed and transformed into useful information to monitor and improve the facility’s financial, clinical, and sustainability performance. The critical issue, however, is methodological: innovation cannot simply be added after the fact to existing infrastructure, as this could increase fragmentation instead of reducing it.
What are the main features of a smart hospital?
Six elements recur across all mature smart hospital projects.
- Data interoperability: electronic health records and medical devices communicate through shared standards, such as HL7 FHIR and DICOM, providing a unified view of the patient journey.
- Smart systems: automation, IoT sensors, and digital twins improve energy efficiency by monitoring energy consumption, temperature, and air quality.
- Communication: intelligently routed switchboards and AI-powered voice bots, supported by the hospital’s wired network, handle appointments and repetitive requests.
- Monitoring: IoT sensors enable continuous clinical monitoring, while automatic alerts notify staff when a device leaves its designated area.
- Automation: robots transport medications, samples, linens, and meals, saving valuable time for healthcare staff.
- Security and compliance: cybersecurity and data governance measures protect health data and help organizations comply, where applicable, with the GDPR, the NIS2 Directive, and the EU AI Act. Without robust security, these technologies cannot be deployed safely and sustainably.
Does artificial intelligence improve diagnostic accuracy in smart hospitals?
Potentially, yes. Clinical evidence is growing, particularly in medical imaging, but performance varies depending on the tool, clinical setting, and patient population. AI is designed to support clinicians, not replace their judgment.
Diagnostic imaging is one of the areas in which the evidence is currently most mature. Policlinico di Milano has used artificial intelligence systems in interventional radiology since 2021 and in its emergency department since 2023. Preliminary findings indicate a significant improvement in diagnostic accuracy, although the radiologist always makes the final decision.
A Mayo Clinic study published in Gut on April 28, 2026, validated REDMOD, a radiomics-based model capable of detecting pancreatic cancer in abdominal CT scans that had previously been reported as normal. The model achieved 73% sensitivity in pre-diagnostic cases, compared with 39% for radiologists reviewing the same images, and identified an average of 475 days before clinical diagnosis.
Regarding expectations for the near future, Elsevier’s Clinician of the Future 2025 report, based on a survey of 2,206 physicians and nurses across 109 countries, found that 54% of clinicians expect AI to enable more accurate diagnoses within the next two to three years.
AI also has an impact both before and after diagnosis. Applications include the automatic triage of urgent cases, patient prioritization, and predictive management of emergency department flows. For these systems to work effectively, however, they require high-quality data, clinical validation, and appropriate algorithm governance.
Real-world examples of smart hospitals
- IRCCS Ospedale Galeazzi-Sant’Ambrogio in Milan: the first hospital in Italy built according to a smart hospital approach. Developed through a partnership between Siemens and GKSD ESCo of the San Donato Group, the facility is based on three main pillars: resilience, sustainability, and energy efficiency.
- Istituto Clinico Humanitas in Rozzano and Ospedale San Raffaele in Milan: these are among the 18 Italian healthcare facilities included in Newsweek and Statista’s World’s Best Smart Hospitals. The ranking covers 350 of the world’s most innovative hospitals and assesses their adoption of digital and artificial intelligence tools.
- Ospedale Koelliker in Turin: the hospital provides self-service check-in through touchscreen kiosks, digital payments, online access to medical reports and radiology images, and an app that allows patients to book and manage appointments 24 hours a day.
- Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori in Milan: IoT sensors have been installed in patient rooms to monitor patients’ clinical conditions.
- Ospedale Niguarda in Milan: through the AVATAR-SC project, the hospital is developing a home telemonitoring system that uses AI to analyze the voice and language of patients with heart failure, with the aim of detecting early signs of clinical deterioration.
- European examples: Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust in the United Kingdom has adopted Hitachi’s Digital Control Centre, which combines AI and smart sensors to provide real-time data on hospital operations. A hospital in Odense, Denmark, uses AI to manage inventory across multiple locations and schedule operating rooms. In the field of research, the European ODIN project identified 11 hospital care challenges that could be addressed by combining robotics, IoT, and artificial intelligence.
Building the smart hospital of tomorrow: we are looking for partners for European projects
No organization can build a smart hospital on its own. It requires an entire ecosystem involving physicians, engineers, software companies, research centers, and regional authorities. This is precisely the model underpinning European funding programs such as Horizon Europe, EU4Health, the Digital Europe Programme, and Interreg, which support transnational consortia rather than individual companies.
IPPOCRATE AS is a software company specializing in e-health and m-health solutions. It is part of JO Group and is registered in the Special Section for Innovative SMEs of the Italian Business Register. For more than 20 years, the company has developed healthcare software for businesses, hospitals, and research centers. It also participates in Italian and European R&D consortia and has extensive experience in securing funding from European Commission agencies, national ministries, and regional authorities.
If you are developing a smart hospital project proposal or working in healthcare IoT, AI-assisted diagnostics, or clinical data interoperability, contact us. We are looking for partners with whom we can apply for upcoming European funding opportunities.