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Jiahui International Hospital has a well-earned reputation in this city for their stellar, international caliber healthcare services and patient care, forward-thinking, community-minded approach to wellness, and breadth of specialized clinical services, encompassing Jiahui International Cancer Center, Women’s Health, and Orthopedics and Sports Medicine.

It’s… just a really nice hospital... from services to facilities to overall operating ethos.  

From overall design to day-to-day operations, everything at Jiahui is organized to be a pristine healing environment, with everything from public spaces to operating theatres constructed around the ideas of safety, security, and efficiency.

Covering an area of almost 40,000 square meters, the 500-bed facility employs a high number of doctors, specialists, and support staff.  To get a better idea of how the hospital operates behind the scenes, SmartShanghai took a peek backstage at some of Jiahui’s most interesting support departments.

This is what they're doing behind those "authorization required" doors...       

Inside the In Vitro Fertilization Laboratory

One of the most exciting recent additions to Jiahui's range of services and clinics is their state-of-the-art and super science-y Fertility and Reproductive Medicine Center pictured here.  Swathed in a yellow glow — certain light spectrums can cause damage to embryos — the center houses two egg retrieval rooms, two embryo transfer rooms, and an embryology laboratory supported by the LifeAire ultra-purification system.  

Kinda looks like the medical facilities on a spaceship.  

The doctors and technicians here use the most advanced equipment and technologies to track the progress of embryos, offering international-level care to both domestic and foreign families looking to increase their families.  

A Recent Milestone

In January of 2022, Doctor Serena ZHAO, Fertility Lab Director, and her team celebrated their first birth conceived at the center — happy times indeed!

The good doctor also let us see the embryonic storage facility, in which they use liquid nitrogen to store the embryos.  We needed the access cards, faceprints, and thumbprints of two embryologists to get in. Super tight security!  

The Miracle of Life...

The magic is happening!  Maybe you can make out from the image there what’s going on.  The incubators Jiahui uses are "EmbryoScope Plus" units -- evidently very, very, very expensive. They use time-lapse technology to monitor embryo development during the culturing process in the cabinet.  

Inside Jiahui International Hospital's Central Laboratory

Loaded with a range of equipment including a biochemistry and immunology automation analyzer, microbiology identification drug susceptibility analyzer, PCR machine, microscopes, centrifuges, and various working stations, the lab facility at Jiahui is connected to every department in the hospital and is where blood, fluid, and whatever else gets analyzed, categorized, and quantified. 

Comprehensive Testing

The lab deals with everything from blood, to body fluid, to bone marrow, to genetic material, and everything else, providing doctors with more information on anything from common colds and allergies to more serious illnesses like cancers.  Led by Grace HOU, Director of Laboratory Services, a dedicated, busy, and professional team work on a range of different equipment as samples come in, are systematically processed, and high-quality information is turned out.  

Tomorrow's Doctors and Researchers

The lab also hosts students participating in the Jiahui Health Scholar Program for high school students, giving them the opportunity to learn more about how the lab operates and a bit about how genetic and DNA analysis is done at the facility.  Students get to learn about safety protocols, laboratory procedures, and super smart-sounding DNA medical sciences. Scroll down to the bottom of this article and scan the QR code to see what family/community programs and events Jiahui has coming up. 

Couldn't Get in the Covid Room, Alas...

Around the corner from the lab are a few serious sets of doors, which are dedicated to Covid-19 -- this is where the PCR tests are analyzed.  Strict safety protocols are observed and a security camera is set up which records everything and sends a feed to a central monitoring body.  At the height of the lockdown, Jiahui was analyzing 3,000 PCR test samples a day, and still tests all their staff and patients -- around 2,000 people every 24 hours.

Inside the In-Patient Pharmacy

Jiahui Pharmacy includes the in-patient, out-patient, and emergency pharmacy, as well as a department that combines scientific research with clinical pharmacy (called PIVAS). This is the in-patient pharmacy facility where they store all the medicines that are used in the treatment of current patients at the hospital.  They store about 1,300 different varieties of medication used in surgeries, oncology treatments, OBGYN, and everything else. 

Medicines Made On-Site

This is Sandy NI, who heads up the in-patient pharmacy and PIVAS.  Her focus is on ensuring medication safety for every patient in the ward by monitoring medicine libraries and distribution, as well as the products they make daily on-site like the IV compounds.

Instant Delivery

To transport the medicines to different areas of the hospital, they use this vacuum tube here that zips it off to wherever it needs to be. Every department and clinic at the hospital has one of these terminals, and so she pops the medicine in the plastic container, punches in the terminal code, and bullets it off to where it’s going. 

Facility Management

Jacky ZHU, Head of Facilities Management: "Jiahui International Hospital is a general hospital, providing healthcare services of an international standard. Currently, it is comprised of more than 35 departments, including key disciplines such as pediatrics, cardiology, and general surgery.

The design and construction of Shanghai Jiahui International Hospital follow the Facility Guidelines Institute (FGI) and Joint Commission International (JCI) international standards, and it is the first healthcare building in mainland China to be awarded the LEED Gold certification.

From overall design to its daily operations, Shanghai Jiahui International Hospital is committed to providing fully patient-centered healthcare, ensuring optimal and efficient processes."

In the Kitchen

Servicing not only the hospital patients but also the entire staff in their own cafeteria, the kitchens at Jiahui are huge and involved — like the kind you would expect to find at a really nice, large luxury hotel.  Lots of walk-in fridges, freezers, dedicated preparation stations, and a huge staff of head chefs, line cooks, servers, and everyone else needed to produce quality at a volume. Food preparation is one step more considered though, as all recipes are formulated by Jiahui’s clinical nutritionists and take the specific dietary needs of special patients into account. 

Efficient Eats

The final preparation room is all organized around workflow, so as to make everything as quick and efficient as possible.  Food trays are put together in an assembly line with a whole team of kitchen staff working together to get the meals out.   

Every Day Is Laundry Day

The laundry rooms at Jiahui are big factory floor-type spaces with huge industrial washing machines operated by several workers at once.  It’s sort of like an industrial line with material going in dirty on the one end and coming out clean on the other. They separate all the laundry into four categories and wash it accordingly —  one for medical staff; one for non-medical staff; one for patients; and one for infectious patients.  

Spotless Operational Procedures

Jinming ZHANG, Laundry Assistant Manager, pictured here, oversees this part of the operation. Highlights in the laundry room: a dedicated particle decontamination chamber, a sewing machine station to repair patches, and a gigantic machine that folds blankets and sheets automatically.  Would probably pick one of those up for home use if it wasn’t the size of my entire apartment. 

The Uniform Room

The staff uniforms are washed, categorized, and processed daily in this facility right here.  Each morning or start of shift, a doctor, nurse, or support staff comes here, swipes a card, taps a few buttons, and this big automated machine conveyor belt swings their uniform back down to them.  At the end of the day, they drop their uniforms back off here to be washed again. 

Inside the Control Room

This is the Jiahui Hospital mission control. This is where they monitor all the electrical power systems, air filtrations systems, and security systems, among other things.  Yeah, they have a fair amount of security! 

Jiahui International Hospital's Central Nervous System

The Variable Air Volume (VAV) System, controlled from this room, is a particularly interesting feature. It’s basically a heavy-duty filter on the entire ventilation system that is the equivalent of having a medical-grade N95 mask on each air conditioner. This system played an important role during the pandemic, allowing Jiahui to open the hospital and clinics normally while achieving zero infections.

Get in Touch...

For more information about Jiahui Health, their services and upcoming events and activities, scan the QR code above for their official WeChat account.