Adoption Frameworks for Digital Health Solutions in Hospital Settings: Implementation Strategies from a Supplier Perspective

Hospitals are dealing with fundamental pressures linked to demographic change, rising expectations, workforce shortages, sustainability requirements, and tightening budgets, which together expose the limits of traditional “digital hospital” models and make the transition toward fully integrated “smart hospitals” a strategic necessity. Smart hospitals are characterized by advanced data integration across clinical, IT, and OT domains to support predictive maintenance, optimized resource allocation, streamlined clinical and operational workflows, and improved patient experience. This chapter traces the evolution of the smart hospital concept and proposes a four-stage adoption trajectory—connected, automated, smart, and autonomous hospitals—detailing the technological, organizational, and cultural shifts at each step and positioning resilience as an additional design dimension, drawing on the understanding of hospitals as critical, adaptable infrastructure in multi-hazard environments. It further analyzes enabling conditions from a supplier perspective, including interoperable solutions, innovative financing instruments, and collaborative implementation models. The chapter ultimately argues that smart hospital transformation is a holistic, multi-stakeholder endeavor that depends on long-term vision, robust governance, and the close alignment of infrastructure modernization with clinical and organizational priorities rather than on technology deployment alone.