Abby Coleman, innovation extended reality specialist, IMEG (St. Louis)
Abby Coleman, innovation extended reality specialist at IMEG (St. Louis), is the 2026 HCD 10 Industry MVP. (Image credit: IMEG)
Trained as a mechanical engineer, Abby Coleman is now leading the way in how IMEG (St. Louis) uses immersive technology to support healthcare design decision-making.
Facilitating virtual (VR) and augmented reality (AR) sessions as part of the firm’s projects, her work places caregivers and project partners directly inside patient rooms and procedure spaces before a single wall goes up. The process allows teams to evaluate layouts, equipment placement, circulation, and technology integration in real time and at full scale, supporting clinician engagement and workflow validation.
In the past year, Coleman has contributed to more than 20 projects and 31 client-facing sessions. Using her engineering background, she thinks in systems, understanding both the technical constraints and the human realities a space must accommodate. She plans, customizes, and executes every VR experience around the specific clinical workflows and design questions a project demands.
For example, at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, she used VR to evaluate competing medical boom configurations, moving the booms so stakeholders could assess reach, clearance, and workflow implications on the spot. For Henry Ford Health’s multibillion-dollar hospital project in Detroit, she led a session with more than 50 clinical workers to collaborate on rapid design iteration of the TV sizes. As a result, the client invited her to showcase the future of the smart patient room as part of a fundraising gala.
Through her leadership, Coleman is evolving VR from a specialized offering into an essential part of the healthcare design process. Additionally, she’s helping clinicians to better visualize and understand room layouts and design features, a clarity that translates directly into better-grounded design decisions and spaces that support care delivery from day one.
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