With funding from the BRICS bank, the unit will inaugurate the SUS digital healthcare assistance network.
The Brazilian federal government will build the first smart public hospital in São Paulo. The resources will come from a R$1.7 billion loan from the New Development Bank (NDB), the BRICS bank. The announcement was made this Wednesday (7) at a ceremony in the Planalto Palace with the presence of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Minister of Health, Alexandre Padilha, and the President of the NDB, Dilma Rousseff.
According to the Ministry of Health, the hospital will be a national reference and a model of fully digital healthcare for the countries of the bloc. The unit will serve public network patients with high-precision medicine, supported by artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies. It will also integrate the network of smart hospitals and services with 14 automated intensive care units (ICUs), which will operate in an interconnected way in several states.
The modernization of excellent hospitals of the Unified Health System (SUS) is also part of the project.
The new hospital affiliated with the University of São Paulo (USP) will have an emergency department with 250 beds and the capacity to treat 200,000 patients per year. The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) will have 350 beds connected to smart ICUs. There will be 25 operating rooms. The unit is expected to be completed in three to four years.
Smart healthcare services use infrastructure with digital technologies to optimize processes and improve patient outcomes. According to the ministry, the first smart hospital could reduce waiting times for specialized care in urgent and emergency situations by more than five times.
The modernization of SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system) hospitals at the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), the new Oncology Hospital in Baixada Fluminense, the new hospital of the Conceição Hospital Group in Rio Grande do Sul, the Brain Institute in Rio de Janeiro, and federal hospitals in Rio, including those of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio), was also announced. For the restructuring of federal hospitals in Rio de Janeiro, R$ 1.2 billion will be invested.
For President Lula, the smart hospital will also improve the positive image of the SUS (Brazilian Public Health System), which was restored by the public system’s participation in the COVID-19 crisis.
“The SUS was treated in a very pejorative way, that is, only misfortune was shown in the SUS, only misery was shown in the SUS, only death was shown in the SUS,” he said.
Lula added that the most vulnerable population must benefit from new technologies. “We need to ensure that the humblest people cannot be invisible. They must be seen. It is for them that we govern. It is for them that we must improve things.”
“There is a great effort to modernize the SUS (Brazilian Public Health System) technologically to offer the Brazilian population, free of charge, the same services as the leading private hospitals of excellence in the country. Today we are on another frontier. This contract will bring a further leap, which is to bring to Brazil what even the largest private Brazilian hospitals do not yet offer,” said the Minister of Health.
The president of the NDB said that the loan repayment term is 30 years and highlighted that China and India are partners in the project.
“This contract goes far beyond investment in hospital infrastructure. It is part of the bank’s commitment to promoting development, which today means access to technology,” stated Dilma.
