MEDIQAPP: App for Green Hospitals
At a medical event held in Bucharest at the end of May, an IT startup dares to put a concept on the conference agenda that is starting to gain popularity abroad but is not yet discussed here: Green Hospital.
A Green Hospital means a more environmentally friendly hospital.
What does one have to do with the other? Let's not forget, buildings are responsible for more than 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions, 35% of waste that ends up in landfills, and consume up to 70% of municipal water. And hospitals are no exception. They are still buildings. Even more so, they are filled with a lot of medical equipment, which is a major energy consumer.
There are several international standards and initiatives that better describe the Green Hospitals concept, such as those specific to the healthcare sector, Global Green and Healthy Hospitals, Green Guide for Health Care (GGHC), or general standards for green buildings, such as WELL Building Standard or the more well-known LEED. Broadly, they all refer to energy, water, and waste management, green procurement, sustainable materials, and building location. But also to aspects related to air, nutrition, light, fitness, comfort, and mental health.
All these standards are voluntary. However, tens of thousands of hospitals worldwide have sought to obtain these certifications for many years now. Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas, for example, was the first hospital in the world to achieve LEED Platinum certification back in 2008.
There are also hospitals in Romania that have had green initiatives. Grigore Alexandrescu Emergency Clinical Hospital for Children in Bucharest, for example, modernized its heating systems to improve energy efficiency. The Miercurea Ciuc County Emergency Hospital thermally rehabilitated the building to reduce energy consumption and CO2 emissions. These are just two examples from the public sector. Plus, a few more examples from the private sector, where photovoltaic panels have been installed.
However, green energy alone does not automatically make you a green hospital. Several measures must be taken simultaneously to obtain such a certification.
For most of the public healthcare system, however, energy efficiency measures, improving indoor air quality, and the well-being of patients, doctors, and staff probably seem like science fiction. Not because our hospitals wouldn't want to take this step towards sustainability, but we all know that many of them are in crisis. A crisis of doctors, a crisis of medicines, lack of equipment, lack of funding. And the list goes on. And for institutions struggling for survival, it seems counterintuitive to tell them to also think about environmental impact.
Nevertheless, there is a person in Romania who has this courage. To open a discussion about Green Hospitals in a country like ours, with healthcare problems like ours.
This person is Adriana (Adina) Manolache, an ISQua expert and medical malpractice consultant, former hospital evaluator for ten years at ANMCS (National Authority for Quality Management in Healthcare). After 18 years of experience in the medical system, having seen how complicated it is to collect and report data, she created an application to assist in the entire evaluation process. A process that every hospital in Romania is obligated to carry out periodically.
So, a software for quality management in hospitals. Which reduces the time and effort of managers, as well as medical staff, with everything related to monitoring performance indicators, storing patient satisfaction questionnaires, data analysis, risk management, and monitoring the status of preparation for ANMCS accreditation.
Adina Manolache, the founder of the application, explains the benefits of the application in the context of Green Hospitals:
“Digitalization in the sense of halved human effort. So, I have doctor efficiency, medical team efficiency. I can also have document management and internal healthcare management organization. And if we go deeper, we get to e-training, e-learning. Every hospital employee must come to know their processes at their workplace, and then training is very important. Of course, it consumes paper and time. Digitalization in this sense helps both the instructor and those being trained.”
Reduced paper consumption
The application is called Mediqapp. Since its launch in November 2018, it has won numerous national and international awards for the innovation it brings to the healthcare system. Including regarding the reduction of paper consumption because the software also functions as a virtual library, which practically replaces files full of documents.
Adina Manolache even made a calculation:
“In a hospital with 16 departments, which can be a clinical or county hospital, without exaggeration, six thousand documents are sought, verified, and accredited. 6,000 managed documents. Each document can have one page up to 50. Each page also means a bibliography, it means toner, it means a person who made that copy... And we can reach over 100,000 lei and more than two tons of paper.”
Two tons of paper and 20,000 euros saved by simply installing an application. Is it a lot? Is it a little?
If we ask hospital managers where discharge notes, without which patients cannot go home, are written in the smallest possible handwriting to save paper, they might not find it so little.
In fact, it might not be little even for a third of Romanian hospitals that have financial problems.
The right moment
Beyond cost and resource reduction, the current context is opportune for installing such an application. Why? Because we are in a period when hospitals in Romania, obligated to re-accredit every five years, like schools, must begin evaluation procedures.
And any accreditation means a large consumption of paper, as the application's founder has noted over the years from her position as an evaluator:
“Hospital accreditation means for that hospital the collection of evidence, evidence with which it justifies the implementation of certain requirements. The more verbose the standard... the greater the need to demonstrate, to prove, and, what do you think, the greater the paper consumption.” (Adina Manolache)
The application has already been installed in 20 hospitals as a pilot project, and the results are very good, says the founder. Managers are satisfied. They have saved time, both for themselves and for doctors, who no longer had to leave the patient's bedside to search for documents among dozens of binders. "At the time of accreditation, without desperate searches through piles of papers, the evaluation process could be conducted elegantly, in a free discussion among distinguished professionals," as Adina likes to recount.
But in Romania, there are over 500 public and private hospitals, plus hundreds of private clinics. And all of them are forced to go through this re-accreditation process. Adina Manolache's goal is to reach as many of these hospitals as possible, which could use the application not only for accreditation but also afterward.
In reality, the software can be used by any public institution legally required to implement internal managerial control.
“The international trend involves monitoring. In our case, this monitoring will come upon us. Working in the international field, I know we cannot escape it. It may take longer; factors prevent us from doing it very quickly, but we will eventually reach monitoring. It's not just accreditation that is helped. Control bodies come. Accreditation only means evaluation; it doesn't mean control. Control is the Ministry of Health, the Court of Audit, other institutions, other interested parties. Well, the application helps me when the control comes, and I don't get fines. Because it will know how to answer and will have very close, at a click's distance, any document with which it justifies the answer to the question asked by the control body. So it protects me from fines. If it prepares me for accreditation, in evaluation, it protects me from fines during control,” says Adina Manolache.
However futuristic the Green Hospital concept may seem, it is already being discussed in high forums worldwide. The next major medical event, where Green Hospitals will also be discussed, takes place on September 25, 2024, in Istanbul, Turkey, and registrations have already opened.
The name of the 40th international conference organized by the International Society for Quality in Health Care (ISQua), a society of which Calitakropolis—the company that developed the Mediqapp system—is an institutional member, is suggestive: “Health for People and Planet: Building Bridges for a Sustainable Future.”
This is the future. Green. Including for hospitals.
