I’m a bit delayed posting about Day 2 of the forum because I was catching up with work. While Day 1 was amazing, the speakers kept up the pace on day 2 of the UIA/PHG Healthcare Forum. I’ve learned so much from the packed day of speakers discussing what’s happening around the world.

Highlights of my day included:

• watching Virginian Burt present her work on the Seidman Cancer Center Healing Garden
• watching a presentation on Nova Scotia’s mandate to redo all long-term beds
• listening to Dr. Diana Anderson present on the ‘dochitect’: an architect turned physician who keeps a black book on both patient info and architectural issues she sees in the NY hospital she interns at
• enjoying the dichotomy that is arising between creating lovely spaces (ERs with courtyards) compared to LEAN design (minimizing the footsteps for staff members)
• listening to keynote speaker David Webster from IDEO. I didn’t know there were companies out there like it.

Healing Garden Presentation

The day didn’t really answer my questions from the day before, but left me with a number of questions that I’m not sure there are answers to. I’ve listed them below in no particular order:

• What does next generation want from their healthcare services? How do we want to interact with our healthcare provider? Do I want to live in the current long-term care style when I need to be there?
• What drives our design thinking? (Design Think g)
• Is the system developed 100 years ago working for today?
• What is a reasonable cost for healthcare? What do health services cost & how can we know?
• How does building design help in the running of the business?
• Does relabeling help: bathing area becomes ‘spa’?
• How do you ‘provide access to exterior’ for all 4 seasons?
• Why do third world countries get cost stripped items but we need nice looking (ie. expensive) items?
• Control: what dies that mean for  me as a designer, the client as an owner, the staff as employees and the patient as a user? Where do these overlap and hinder each other?
• How can we use multiple intelligence in medical facilities?
• Does a view provide privacy by allowing you to mentally escape into your own thoughts?
• How do we test new concepts for entire units pre-construction?
• For hospitals with robotic services, what happens if systems go down?
• How do we shift thinking from disease prevent, to health activation?

I’m expecting more questions to surface tomorrow.

What do you think?

As you can see, this conference really got my wheels spinning. What questions do you have about the your healthcare system?