The finale of Healthcare Design’s fourth annual conceptual design competition, Breaking Through, was held at the 2024 Healthcare Design Conference + Expo in Indianapolis, Oct. 5-8, with SmithGroup taking home top prize for The Decaf Hospital concept.

The competition encourages healthcare design innovation by asking participants to present concepts that solve challenges anticipated in the future delivery of care. The 2024 program is sponsored by Durasein and Mannington Commercial.

Forty-one teams submitted innovative design concepts for the 2024 event. From there, 13 were selected to move forward to the second round, where ideas were fleshed out in robust, visually rich presentations that covered the challenges their concepts solve and details of that solution.

In June, the jury met to review those semifinalist concepts, choosing four to advance to the final stage of the competition, which was held live during the keynote “Breaking Through Finale,” at the HCD Conference. (To see the nine semifinalists, click here.)

The finalists included:

  • The Decaf Hospital, submitted by SmithGroup
  • Invisible, submitted by Gresham Smith
  • Oasis, submitted by HGA
  • The Respira Model: From Housing for Health to Health for Housing, submitted by Perkins&Will

After the four finalist teams presented their concepts in a keynote session, audience members voted for the concept they found most innovative via live polling, with the winning SmithGroup team taking home the $10,000 prize.

Additional coverage of the winning and runner-up concepts will be featured in the November/December issue of Healthcare Design magazine and on hcdmagazine.com. Find more coverage of the 2024 HCD Conference here.