Stanford’s new hospital is brimming with futuristic tech. Will it help save money — or drive up costs?
PALO ALTO, Calif. — What does the hospital of the future look like?
One vision of it is the shiny new Stanford Hospital, which wheeled in its first patients on Sunday morning after $2 billion in spending and a decade in planning and construction. It counts 368 patient rooms, occupies the square footage of 14.3 football fields, and towers 180 feet over Silicon Valley.
The building is like a candy shop for a health-tech enthusiast: There’s a fleet of 23 self-driving robots, each about the size of a big office printer, designed to trek through the hallways at 2 miles an hour transporting heavy items like waste, linens, and gift store merchandise. There’s a food-truck-sized machine with 50,000 slots meant to dispense pills into single-dose packets. (It’s
