Hospital Administrator Perspectives on Integrating Novel Interactive Technology in the Hospital

Hospitals and other healthcare settings benefit from the development and deployment of innovative interactive technology to better serve the needs of patients and employees alike. However, there are likely incompatibilities between the typical processes surrounding technology innovation and the processes that are central to a hospital’s functioning to facilitate patient care and meet employee needs. In this paper, we examine hospital administrators’ perspectives on the deployment of novel interactive technology in a real-world hospital setting. We conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with non-patient-facing employees at a rehabilitation hospital that had recently deployed novel smart patient rooms across all 75 rooms. Our findings indicate that prototyping was crucial for informing deployment decisions; however, scaling introduced unforeseen challenges, including financial and staffing complexities and an incomplete understanding of costs versus benefits. While the technology increased patient independence and reduced staff workload, reliability issues and overreliance on technology sometimes disrupted workflows and rehabilitation. These findings contribute by providing insights into the complex organizational effort involved in large-scale technology deployment, as well as the decision-making process for designing, deploying, and evaluating it. Future HCI researchers should explore opportunities to make HCI methods for ideation, prototyping, and evaluation more accessible in this setting.