At the Healthcare Design Conference this week (now in the rearview mirror; may I sleep now?), we unveiled a new logo for Healthcare Design. Really, it was a long time coming–our previous logo had served us well for 10 years. And in those 10 years, the changes that have taken place in this industry are staggering.
Industry professionals who produced some of the most impressive and memorable work of the past year were invited on stage to accept awards at a special luncheon held Sunday, November 17, at the Healthcare Design Conference in Orlando.
With images of their accomplishments projected on a massive screen behind the podium, winners from Healthcare Design’s Architectural and Interior Design Showcase, Remodel/Renovation Competition, and The HCD 10 competitions were honored in front of hundreds of their peers.
The University of Florida’s Clinical Translational Research Building (CTRB) is a five-story, 120,000-square-foot facility that provides a headquarters for clinical and translational research for both the campus and the state. The building houses the Clinical and Translational Science Institute and the National Institute of Health (NIH) Institute on Aging, as well as several university departments studying biostatistics, epidemiology, and health outcomes and policy.
I'm still surprised when I see articles that talk about well-designed, impressively built healthcare facilities as if they're like rare-bird sightings. I shouldn't be–in the grand scheme, there are still a lot of grim-feeling buildings desperately in need of updating and upgrading to serve patients, staff, and the community better. It's a good reminder that everything we talk about at Healthcare Design is really starting to sink in and take hold across the landscape, but it's a slow process.
Tomorrow is the first day of November, and for me, that calendar flip also flips a switch in my head—the one that lights a neon sign proclaiming “Healthcare Design Conference.” That 100-foot mental reminder will blaze uninterrupted until November 20. But I’m good with that.
Research is so important to Healthcare Design's mission of providing current, usable information to help our readers build and maintain modern and efficient facilities that positively affect patient outcomes. But we're not a technical research journal—another part of our mission is to provide this information in engaging, concise, and easily understandable writing that’s consistent with our brand “voice.”
As hospitals have become more patient-centered, there’s been a trend toward including a family area inside the patient area to promote family presence, support, and involvement in patient care. Growing evidence shows that family members play an important role in supporting patient care, and that the physical environment affects family involvement. However, few empirical studies have attempted to show the effectiveness of the patient-centered design on family members’ presence and their behavior.
Several months ago, we started a Healthcare Design Pinterest account and Associate Editor Shandi Matambanadzo created a few boards. We didn’t announce it with any fanfare—we didn’t “announce” it all, actually—because we wanted to play with it a little, see if there was interest in the community, and then figure out where to go from there.
The conversion of empty buildings (particularly retail spaces) into healthcare facilities isn’t new, but just in the past few months it seems like these completed projects have multiplied exponentially.
“Is this a hospital or a hotel?” A New York Times article posed this question—rather cheekily, actually, complete with an interactive quiz featuring photos of actual hospitals and hotels—about a week ago. I scored a 9 out of 12. To my eye, any of the shots could have been healthcare spaces.
Healthcare Design has been honoring the industry’s most influential people for a long time now, and last year we tried something new to put a finer point on the process. There are a lot of different players who have a hand in any design project, whether it’s a simple exam room remodel or a ground-up, multi-million-dollar healthcare campus. The HCD 10, as we now call it, identifies 10 categories of professionals, because we want to recognize those distinct levels of influence.
Every project has a story to tell, but there’s only so much space to tell them. Here, the 2013 Architectural and Interior Design Showcase jurors have called out some notable elements of specific projects that are worthy of attention.
