AI and innovation in healthcare at UCF Lake Nona Hospital
Orlando, FL — Community leaders and Seminole County high school students gathered Wednesday at UCF Lake Nona Hospital, part of HCA Florida Healthcare, to learn more about medical innovations underway at HCA Healthcare’s first Innovation Hub. Located at 6700 Lake Nona Boulevard, UCF Lake Nona Hospital was dubbed “the hospital of the future” when it opened in 2021, quickly becoming the site of groundbreaking medical innovation and technology in patient care.
Attendees experienced firsthand how artificial intelligence and medical technology are solving tomorrow’s healthcare issues today for care team members at the bedside, in the emergency department, and in workforce management, ultimately enhancing patient care.
“Our team is boldly embracing our role as an Innovation Hub to develop, test and scale digital solutions to transform healthcare,” said Wendy Brandon, CEO of UCF Lake Nona Hospital. “We are creating tools that improve care for patients and make the work easier for our caregivers.”
Highlights of promising technology on display and in practice at the hospital included:
Timpani — an automated scheduling and staffing platform, first developed at UCF Lake Nona Hospital in 2022, is saving nursing leaders significant time and has been scaled to 106 HCA Healthcare hospitals with more on the way .
Nurse Handoff — a first-of-its-kind technology solution designed with Google Cloud to solve the industry-wide challenge of the critical handoff from one nurse to another between shifts . This digital assistant resource was developed by nurses for nurses to improve and enhance communication by consolidating the summary of a patient’s encounter from admission to current date into one succinct and logical interactive handoff process.
Advanced Documentation in the ER — ambient listening technology assists with clinical documentation, reducing clinician time on paperwork and allowing more time on patient care.
Geetika Kesavan is an incoming senior at Seminole High School who is interested in pursuing a career in AI and automation. “I saw the future today, she said. “Coming here made me realize the importance of the back end of healthcare and how AI and automation can make care better and safer for patients.”
Brothers Jai and Avi Gupta, rising seniors at Seminole High School, shared their impressions of the hands-on experience. “It was great seeing all of these new innovations being applied in an actual healthcare setting and not just in theory,” Jai said.
Avi added, “Seeing how these innovations directly impact the lives of healthcare workers and how the people working on them are using the nurses’ feedback is amazing. Their collaboration is making the technology that much better.”
HCA Healthcare is responsible for 43 million annual patient encounters each year. By utilizing this data and investing in digital and AI technologies, HCA Healthcare is driving meaningful change, improving patient outcomes and elevating the standard of care.
“Because of our size and our scale, and obviously our success and capabilities, we have the ability to make these kinds of investments and to think long-term,” said Dr. Michael Schlosser, senior vice president and chief transformation officer, Digital Transformation and Innovation, HCA Healthcare. “The Innovation Hub at UCF Lake Nona Hospital in Orlando is truly leading the way in revolutionizing delivery of care, across HCA Healthcare and the entire healthcare industry.”