Physical-digital model for co-design in healthcare buildings

Abstract

This paper presents a tool for co-design, integrated to the BIM platform, to involve users in the design process of healthcare buildings. Co-design with users can contribute to the redesign of healthcare activities and enable architects to align the design of physical space with that of services, thus increasing the supply and quality of services to the population. However, methods and tools for co-design that apply a common language are still incipient, which hinders the spread of the approach. Concomitantly, the increasing use of BIM platform for building design has offered great advantages for the design process, such as reduction in time and costs, early and accurate view of design decisions, as well as collaboration of different stakeholders, and higher process efficiency. This study was conducted through the Design Science Research (DSR) approach and its main contribution is the development of a physical-digital model, which enabled the design of an infirmary together with healthcare professionals. Although the literature reports other co-design models, the novelty of our model is it enables the digitalization of the resulting design by the image processing software developed in this study, which generates a digital file with information on the design components and their location and will promote future insertions of data in the BIM platform. The usability of the model was evaluated in a Controlled Experiment conducted in a fictitious infirmary workshop with members of the HU-UFSCar nursing team. According to the results, the model achieved the goals established by the research.