As the Palomar Medical Center West facility heads towards its completion date of July 2011 on schedule, the San Diego Business Journal reports that its technological backbone will be state of the art.

The facility, which already plans to break uncharted ground for a healthcare facility, is testing new technologies through the Palomar Pomerado Health district. Some of the technologies the ‘hospital of the future’ hopes to use include wireless patient monitoring and telepresence robots. As well, patients will, through the use of a large LCD screen, have more control over the goings-on in their hospital room. A patient will be able to control temperature, order a meal, surf the Web, conduct video conferences with the doctor, and do other things. It is not clear whether the patients will be able to play Second Life yet.

Palomar Pomerado had already advised Palomar West to make its hospital plans virtual, which it did, and posted its plans in the 3D world of Second Life.

“We’re trying… to rethink how healthcare is going to be delivered and how technology can be an enabler,” said Orlando Portale, chief technology and innovation officer for Palomar Pomerado Health, in the article.

The medical center will be the first to merge these technologies, some of which had been in use on an individual basis in other hospitals. And this, according to a director at Gartner Research, invites new challenges.

“The biggest challenge that we face is integrating all this stuff into something that works for the patient, for the nurse, for the doctor and for the technician,” said Dr. Barry Hieb of Gartner. “If you have all these different systems, but they’re all separate … that doesn’t help.”