The Healthcare Design Decade

Abstract

In the distant future we will look back at this decade as the Renaissance of healthcare design. In the last 20 years we have come to understand the interplay between the science of medicine and the science of design.We have focused on and devoted significant attention and resources to the growing healthcare market. In doing so, as architects and interior designers serving this segment of the design industry, we have discovered the gaps in our education and certification process. Nearly 25 years ago a small group of dedicated architects and designers reached out to one another through symposiums, drawing attention to the collective design issues that faced our industry and the public at large. These design pioneers planted seeds of awareness and hope that healthcare design was more than subjective style, regional taste, and practicality. They placed healthcare design on our distant radar screen and tested new designs that supported new models of care.With much hard work and slow recognition we have reached the tipping point, a decade where it is all beginning to come together. Architects, designers, clients, patients, and family members now understand the connection among body, mind, and soul and how healing environments can help determine outcomes. Design is no longer a byproduct of the computer or materials library; it is the product of creative analysis based on scientific research with predictable outcomes that are continually monitored and shared with the world.Many of us have already experienced the difficulty of making major healthcare decisions for our aging parents, and we are keenly aware of the colossal number of aging patients that will require care well into their 90s. We now understand the importance of healthy environments, and our clients-whether they manage hospitals or senior living centers-have reached out in pursuit of design firms with the talent to deliver projects that address these needs.In this decade, as healthcare clients have been faced with the most competitive and threatening financial problems ever, they have come to understand if only in part the value that good design offers their institutions.Design matters; design saves; design improves care and healing; and design can be affordable.This same decade has witnessed the beginning and significant growth of the American College of Healthcare Architects (ACHA); the American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designers (AAHID); the Coalition for Healthcare Environments Research (CHER); the Center for Health Design (CHD); the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Academy of Architecture for Health; the International Interior Design Association's (IIDA) Healthcare Forum; and many new books, articles, research papers, lectures, and theses on healthcare design. Additionally, we are privileged to have a unified consortium between industry partners and healthcare designers. These industry partners genuinely want to develop products for the healthcare environment that are approved and embraced by healthcare architects and designers.In response to this collective effort and the growing body of knowledge, we will benefit from a new peer-reviewed design journal, the Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD), which will enable us to pinpoint easily healthcare design research information that has used evidence-based design criteria as its measure. The sharing of information and research results will catapult healthcare design professionals far beyond other design industry segments. …