2025 HCD Conference + Expo Preview: How Adaptable Healthcare Design Can Bridge Generational Gaps

The 2025 Healthcare Design Conference + Expo, heads to Kansas City, Mo., Oct. 25-28, bringing three days of keynote and educational sessions for attendees.

Healthcare Design is previewing some of the upcoming educational sessions in a series of Q+As with speakers, sharing what they plan to discuss and key takeaways they’ll offer attendees.

Session: “E40 – Patient of the Future: Understanding Generational Design Impacts from Boomers to Beta”

Sunday, Oct. 26, 3:15-4:15 p.m.

Speakers: Ted Hood, principal, TLC Engineering; Amanda Ripley, associate principal and senior interior designer, Wilmot Sanz; Julie Vick, vice president, supply chain and program management, Adventist HealthCare

Designing healthcare spaces that cater to the diverse expectations of patients across generations—baby boomers, millennials, Gen Z, and beyond—requires a holistic approach to the patient and visitor experience starting at the moment of arrival. All stakeholders in a project including designers, engineers, and healthcare providers must be aligned to identify how technology, flexibility, and other design solutions can bridge generational gaps.

Speakers in this session will focus on key touchpoints, including entry, staff interactions, waiting areas, paths of travel, and in-room care to provide insights into balancing advanced technology with realistic expectations, aligning workflow with diverse patient needs, and building spaces that inspire trust.

Healthcare Design: How is technology able to help bridge gaps in how different generations perceive, interact with, and experience healthcare environments?

Ted Hood: Technology is constantly evolving and providing opportunities for improving efficiency and streamlining the experience for patients and providers alike. Different generations have widely varying expectations and levels of comfort when it comes to adopting new technologies. Baby boomers crave touch and human interaction while Gen Z and millennials are digital natives and are flexible in their environments. It’s not just generational differences, though; technology can also help bridge language barriers and cultural touchstones. Regardless, prioritizing a simplified and intuitive user interface helps to filter potentially complex healthcare-related tasks and information items into clear requirements and functions that are easy for most to navigate.

Julie Vick: Technology opens doors for streamlined connectivity with providers and more efficient solutions for tasks like dictation, but the same variations in comfort level with the platforms and accessibility apply. For example, the crucial blue translation phone, connecting staff to language interpretation services in dozens of languages, while rudimentary, provides a key service that is critical for patient care.

HCD: How do you approach a healthcare project holistically to create adaptable spaces that appeal differently to different generations?

Amanda Ripley: A transformational healthcare user experience starts and ends with technology but is not a full replacement for legacy models. To be effective, these methods must be balanced with a personal touch and carefully considered operational factors. No single solution will apply universally to all institutions and communities. For example, we examined patient rooms and the integration and digitization of patient information in real time. What works best for each generation, a white board and dry erase marker, a digital board updated per shift, or a smart board with interactive app interface and patient interaction.

As designers, we need to respect the diversity of the patients, visitors, caregivers, and staff—generationally and otherwise. The solutions typically cater to everyone and provide both options, digital and low-tech. Not accounting for this diversity in the patient and visitor population risks alienating those who are less technologically savvy or who “just don’t want to speak to machines.”

HCD: How have case studies informed your strategies for inclusive design? What are some of the specific insights you gained, and how did you apply those to the built environment?

Ripley: All of this has practical implications on the built environment. For instance, though apps and kiosks have revolutionized what’s possible in the patient check-in experience, facilities may still need to plan for having a greeter station as older generations have issues with technology and need that human element in their patient journey.

We have also investigated waiting room programming and patient flow—understanding what types of facilities are moving to registration and mini-sub waiting areas. Some facilities are moving patients straight to a room from registration but that is causing operational flow issues.

Wayfinding, whether integrated into the built environment or through a digital app, is another area where patients can create their own care journey either through high- or low-tech pathways using mobile apps and digital signage or with integrated thoughtful physical design facets such as architectural forms and color cues.

Vick: Flexible and customizable patient bedside technology interfaces have become key to addressing the digital divide between generations as well as providing access to a diverse cultural population. It is also important to provide patients who may be hesitant to engage with bedside technology such as digital footwall displays with the control to opt out. In addition, we have seen wall-mounted monitors being installed only in certain department types. Part of this is due to space constraints, operational workflow, and dictation requirements for the space. We have been moving to the use of workstations on wheels for our staff and clinicians in most departments, creating a more flexible care process.

How do these design strategies “future-proof” healthcare environments?

Hood: New technologies are not going anywhere. It is important to think through what’s next and design spaces that support ongoing growth in network capability and future advancements even if a hospital isn’t fully ready to implement these operational changes or invest in the new equipment on day one.

The built environment must be designed with options. The space, clinical workflow, and associated devices that are trending must be implemented into an adaptable design. Health institutions not only want a physical front door but also a digital front door, where patient care journey starts on a phone from the moment they arrive at a facility. In addition, Bluetooth location solutions enable real-time asset tracking, patient monitoring, and staff location services within facilities to improve efficiency, patient safety, and operational workflows. These systems use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tags and beacons to identify and locate devices like wheelchairs and medical equipment, as well as track patients and staff.

We should move away from designing around one particular technology or manufacturer and focus on flexible platforms to accommodate many technological options.

HCD: What’s one takeaway from your session that you hope attendees walk away with?

Ripley: Technology will continue to rapidly change the way healthcare is delivered, and we must take a collective, multidisciplinary approach to re-envision the spaces needed to deliver that care.

Find updates and additional information on the 2025 HCD Conference + Expo here.

Robert McCune is senior editor of Healthcare Design and can be reached at [email protected].