Crafting the DNA of smart hospitals: decoding standards and indicators through a scoping review

The significant global spread of smart hospitals emphasizes the need for clear and well-defined criteria and standards to effectively guide their design, implementation, evaluation, and management. This scoping review aimed to clarify the requirements for smart hospitals by examining standards and indicators reported in the existing literature. Using Arksey and O’Malley’s framework, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature search across PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Embase, and ProQuest and identified 3,676 publications from 2000 to 2024. 43 papers that focused on standards and requirements for smart hospital design, implementation, evaluation, and management met the eligibility criteria and were included in the review. Six main themes and 29 sub-themes were identified, including Smart Technological Infrastructure (Five sub-themes), Smart Services Delivery and Patient Interaction (Eight sub-themes), Operational Management and Administration (Three sub-themes), Regulatory and Maturity (Four sub-themes), Safety Infrastructure (Three sub-themes), and Smart Buildings and Environmental Infrastructure (Six sub-themes). The breakdown of each sub-theme into its component parts highlighted the depth of the analysis and the importance of integrating all relevant aspects for a comprehensive and multi-dimensional understanding of smart hospital standards. The findings position smart hospitals as complex health-system transformations in which technological advancement is inseparable from organisational, human, infrastructural, regulatory, and managerial capacities. This study provides practical insights for policymakers, hospital managers, healthcare administrators, and investors to support informed decision-making in the development, implementation, and assessment of smart hospitals, and may ultimately contribute to the evolution of healthcare systems globally.