After more than seven years of planning, the Parkland Health and Hospital system in Dallas moved into a new campus in August. For vice president of IT Joseph Longo, the long wait presented a few major challenges, most notably that the technology lifecycle changed dramatically during that time period.

Longo discussed the new digital facility during a session at the HIMSS conference on March 1 and also spoke with Clinical Innovation + Technology about the state-of-the-art hospital.

“I always draw the analogy that if we were to set in stone when we first started designing this what our mobile communication device would be and we based it off of whatever the most popular device was out there, everyone would’ve been walking around with Blackberries in their hands in our hallways,” Longo said. “We weren’t able to get too specific real early on because the changing technology turns over so quickly. We had to settle for a strategic approach to technology understanding what capabilities we needed to add to this building and then start designing the specific products that would meet and provide those capabilities much closer to the opening.”

Parkland’s new campus is approximately 2.7 million square feet, while its old one opened in the 1950s and was one million square feet. The campus cost more than $1.3 billion, while the technology upgrades cost approximately $80 million, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Longo said the project focused on eight strategic technology capabilities: infrastructure (wired and wireless connectivity); end user devices; communication; security; biomedical device integration; digital media/audiovisual management; radiofrequency identification and real-time location systems; and patient experience.

“We knew early on that these were the main capabilities that we did not have mature in our old facility due to a myriad of different barriers,” he said. “We then approached building the new hospital and designing the new hospital saying these are the eight pillars that we need to add capabilities to enhance and enable what we call platinum level workflows that our operational and clinical counterparts were designing.”

Besides dealing with the increased size of the building, Longo and his team also had to deal with other changes. For instance, Parkland switched operations from centralized nursing models to decentralized nursing models and changed the layouts of its floors.

In addition, elevator systems, building automation, security communications and other systems that were analog in the old hospital are now running over IP in the new building.

“The idea was making sure [the systems] are all harmonized together and they all talk with each other riding over that same IP, all-digital backbone,” Longo said.

To help patients get where they're going, Longo said Parkland's lobbies feature touchscreen, interactive, icon-driven wayfinding kiosks, which give patients and visitors directions in English and Spanish and allows them to email, text or take a photo of the screen for the directions. The hospital also has digital signage at each elevator, which provides patients and visitors with information on each of the 17 floors.

There is also a 42-inch, LCD television that runs a patient experience system, which integrates with the nurse call system and provides patients with access to audio and videos geared toward their education levels and languages. The videos feature disease processes and diagnoses that are appropriate for patients. Parkland’s patient population speaks 42 languages, according to Longo, and the system allows the hospital to have interpreters work with patients in their native language.

Before moving to the hospital, Parkland’s staff conducted training with doctors, nurses and other employees to help teach them the new technologies. For instance, each Friday they would walk through their workflows, see the new facility, test their badge access and work with some of the new technologies before they saw patients.

During the next two years, Parkland plans on implementing more technological innovations. As of mid-February, all of the inpatient operations moved to the new hospital, but some outpatient areas in the old hospital were still being used.

“One of our biggest challenges moving in was we wanted to supply as many capabilities as we could, but also be cognizant that people are going through massive change that’s going to make it hard to know exactly how to use every single possible bell and whistle,” Longo said. “We purposefully didn’t roll out every bell and whistle to all of these capabilities knowing that it would hurt more than it would help. They are now on our two-year roadmap to be rolled out more judiciously when we have the appropriate amount of attention and the ability to train appropriately.”