Tao Li, Medical planner, architect, associate, HOK (San Francisco)

With a background in architecture, data analysis, and healthcare design, Tao Li has a well-rounded perspective that allows her to take a comprehensive approach to her work as a medical planner at HOK.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in architecture from California Polytechnics University, San Luis Obispo (San Luis Obispo, Calif.), she started her career as a junior designer at Dahlin Group Architecture and Planning (Dublin, Calif.), before moving to HOK as a senior architectural design professional and job captain in 2013. She left to spend a year as a design coordinator for healthcare projects at HGA (San Francisco), before returning to HOK in 2018. Realizing her interest in the programming and planning of healthcare facilities, she shifted her career to focus on medical planning.

Li got her start in the healthcare design field as an architecture job captain on the Mule Creek State Prison Campus (Ione, Calif.) project, where she designed the campus outpatient clinic building and guided the project through construction. This work helped to fuel a greater interest in healthcare, as her research for the project made her realize the importance of healthcare and rehabilitation to the well-being of the community.

She expanded her skillset beyond architecture by working with HOK’s healthcare consulting department on the strategic planning of facilities for Stanford Children’s Health. Visiting more than 70 hospitals and clinics to assess the current conditions of the built environment, she analyzed workflows that were compromised due to physical constraints and gathered data on utilization rates and space demands. This experience provided a direct view into the positive and negative impacts of the built environment on operations, efficiency, and care delivery of a healthcare facility.

Her project work also includes a bed tower expansion at the Kaiser Permanente Roseville Medical Center in Roseville, Calif., where she was one of two lead medical planners on the project. Her work on the $575 million project included leading an interdisciplinary design and construction team to identify components suitable for prefabrication to streamline the construction process, including headwalls and footwalls for the intensive care unit rooms, medical/surgical rooms, emergency treatment rooms, and post-anesthesia care unit bays. Through detailed BIM modeling, all framing, in-wall conduits, plumbing routing, fittings, finishes, and equipment were designed and coordinated to minimize conflicts. She later coordinated the 1:1 scale physical mock-ups of these prefabricated components to then inform the final design and documentation.

In Alaska, she was the lead medical and justice planner for the North Slope Borough Public Safety and Integrated Behavioral Health Center in Utqiagvik, Alaska, a 70,000-square-foot facility with a 24-bed inpatient behavioral health unit, outpatient clinic, and 25-cell jail. The project fueled her passion for creating physical spaces that reduce the stigma for both public safety and mental healthcare within the community.

As an integral part of HOK’s healthcare design practice, Li merges her architectural background and her empathetic nature to create hospitable and functional healing environments that make a difference.

Path to healthcare design: My first experience with healthcare design came from designing a large state prison campus, where I focused on an outpatient clinic within the institution. Eager to learn more about the unique nature of healthcare in correctional facilities, I developed a deep interest in behavioral and mental health facilities and realized the importance of healthcare and rehabilitation spaces to the community’s well-being.

Describe your design approach: Empathetic, compassionate, efficient, and functional.

On your desk now: On the drawing board are a few projects for Sutter Health in California, including a renovation project to turn an existing warehouse into a medical office building and a new 7-story patient bed tower as a part of an existing hospital campus. Additional works that are already under construction are a hospital expansion with diagnostic and treatment services and a patient bed tower in California, and the Kai Tak New Acute Hospital campus in Hong Kong, which encompasses two 11-story medical office buildings on a major hospital campus.

Most rewarding project to date: The Kai Tak New Acute Hospital campus in Hong Kong. This was my first large-scale international hospital project as a medical planner, so I was eager to learn about the different practices on the other side of the world. The scale of the project and the complexity of the program were very stimulating, and the learning opportunity was tremendous. We worked seamlessly with the local users to merge their unique workflows with Western best-practice planning concepts into a beautiful and efficient campus.

What success means to you: The projects we design and construct will last 50 or more years. They need to continue to serve their functions on day one and as time progresses. Success is understanding what our clients want to achieve with the project now and helping them look ahead beyond the current time.

Industry challenge on your radar: As telemedicine, mobile/wearable devices, and remote testing technologies develop, places where patients can receive care are more diverse than ever. New opportunities will emerge. As designers of healthcare spaces, we need to stay curious and open-minded about what patient care spaces could be in the future.

Must-have skill for healthcare designers today: Curiosity. As designers in a time with booming technology and medical breakthroughs, we must create long-lasting solutions that are flexible and adaptable enough for the unknown future. Also, in our own workflow, emerging technologies and tools are streamlining our design process and assisting us to generate more comprehensive solutions. Though these technological changes are unknown and may seem daunting, I encourage designers to stay curious and embrace whatever comes our way.

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