Even though we are just taking the smallest steps into the healthcare realm, we have learned so much on how as designers we have a large impact on how the healthcare world works. Today Julia Louie, from HDR, was able to come into our studio and speak to us on their newest ideas of how healthcare properties should be designed. This is when we first heard the term “Hospital without Walls”.
So what is a “Hospital without Walls”? Kind of a weird concept since when you think of healthcare, sometimes your first thought is of a hospital, you know the huge buildings filled with doctors and sick people and you don’t go in unless you are really sick. But instead could there be a different way to think of healthcare? Does it have to be the same types of programs (i.e. patient rooms, labs, Emergency departments)? Could this building be filled with windows? Could it help both sick and healthy people? Maybe it could even be a meeting place for the community? These are among the topics we discuss with Louie during our lecture and what prompted our studio to look past the norms of what we thought a healthcare campus was and toward what future healthcare systems are gravitating towards.
Healthcare is indeed taking this jump from treating individuals to teaching individuals on how to prevent sickness. This jump can be seen as P4 medicine where the 4 P’s are as follows:
predictive
participatory
preventative
Personalized
As designers we should be able to provide a design solution that accounts for the P4 medical idea and the components that will help its users to achieve the lifestyle that goes with the P4 system. This is especially important for dense poor urban environments, like our site, because a lot of the people that live in these areas don’t have the right resources to accommodate a healthy lifestyle.
Looking at the P4 system and applying it to the term “Hospital without Walls”, I started to think about what types of building programs and master planning could direct individuals toward acting upon the P4 system. Maybe if there were more spread out areas of smaller clinics it would be easier for people to schedule check ups in order to predict certain health outcomes or diagnosis’s. Also if there were smaller more spread out clinics in areas like Lawndale maybe people would be more inclined to show up to their appointments because it would be more feasible for them to get to the appointment. And because these clinics are smaller and serve a sub-community of the larger scope there would be a more personalized healthcare approach to their diagnosis. If these smaller clinics were also home to things like the community centers, recreation, or parks the community would have a health inspired place to congregate.
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