The ultimate consumer question that surrounds every breakthrough design:

When will I be able to experience this project first hand?

While it would be incredible to have the entire Patient Room 2020 concept realized in a hospital one day, practicality will quickly tell you it’s a long shot given the complexity of the healthcare system. The greatest potential for near-term market penetration lies in the specific product features of the room.

Truly innovative products entering the market often create a halo effect, where the perceived positive features of a particular item extend to a broader vision or brand. We believe this type of market phenomenon can and will apply to the specific architectural elements and products within Patient Room 2020. As the market begins to validate these products, we can reintroduce them as a component of an elevated patient experience. In setting these new expectations, the patient room can begin to transform itself into an environment that mirrors the collective design concepts of Patient Room 2020.

The goal of Patient Room 2020 is to inspire what could be possible, not to prescribe exactly what is going to happen in the not-so-distant future. Think of it as a concept car that is rolled out each year: There is an initial “wow” factor from a provocative concept that draws both positive and negative media attention. Between the unveiling of the concept and entry into the market, the product is transformed, sometimes dramatically, in order to become viable.
Many of the current ideas in Patient Room 2020 represent a hypothesis within a larger experiment. The next step is building and testing the ideas to prove their validity. Many of the added construction costs may be negated if we are able to provide evidence that these concepts are effective at improving patient outcomes.
For example, if the use of solid surface material is proven to reduce the incidence of hospital acquired infections by 50%, then the payback for using that material might be less than five years when factoring in costs related to readmission, lawsuits due to wrongful death, and staff workers compensation claims. Conversely, should testing show that these materials do not affect the rate of HAI’s, the design team will advocate its removal from the room design. Cost should be directly tied to performance, but we won’t know how things perform if we don’t take risks and test new ideas rigorously.
In the meantime, know that many core ideas in the project do have proven potential for widespread use across any hospital system, some of which are already being used in existing hospital settings.

Why does this room look so sterile? Couldn’t it be warmer?

The current hospitality movement within health care, especially in the US, is geared toward creating a “home-like” environment, usually generated through the use of faux wood floors and popular interior colors. With hospital acquired infections killing 100,000 people each year (representing the fourth leading cause of death in the US), we submit that patients can find comfort in an environment that displays a clean, high-tech aesthetic.

Further, the Patient Room 2020 design embraces the significant role of technology in modern care giving.  Rather than simply relying on home-like surfaces to make patients feel comfortable, the design team has baked meaningful features and amenities into the project to serve as digital comfort food.  For example, the Patient Ribbon collects several disparate systems located throughout the room into one architectural element.  This aesthetic gesture also improves care by giving patients several amenities, including:

• A digital platform to collaborate and connect with loved ones
• Adjustable lighting presets
• Hypersonic sound cocooning
• Voice activated controls for those unable to move
• An overhead patient lift system

Health care technology is only valuable when it meets a human need. To deliver that technology in a thoughtful, clean and modern aesthetic is to demonstrate a high level of consideration for today’s patients and their safety concerns.

How does this design help nurses?

As rightfully pointed out by one reviewer, the CoDesign article did contain one significant omission. The word “nurse” (or any other member of the medical staff for that matter) was never used in the article. However, the reality is that many of the ideas evolved out of collaborative design sessions with healthcare providers who currently work in the trenches at hospitals, and each concept directly relates to difficulties they encounter on a daily basis. The end result is that several design features are specifically integrated into the concept in order to assist nursing staff and strive to streamline their work processes so that they can spend more direct time with patients. A few examples of staff amenities include:

• Removable trash system with capacity sensor alerts that trigger pickup
• Point of care nurse server system that decentralizes medications and minimizes travel distances
• Convenient bedside workstation that provides counter space for charting and administering medicine

Optimizing patient interaction and clinical efficiency within the nursing staff is a significant objective within Patient Room 2020, and we look forward to testing these specific design features as the initiative progresses.

Prior to the design presentation, we heard from Clemson University President James Barker, who heralded the research partnership among NXT, Clemson University’s Architecture + Health Program, and Birdtree Design as an example of the kind of collaboration needed to shape the future of health care. He noted the partnership as analogous in spirit to the university’s CU-ICAR program (Clemson University International Center for Automotive Research), a highly successful public/private/academic research model.

Dave Ruthven, principal of Birdtree Design, shared the Patient Room 2020 concept with the group, noting the key objectives of the design: full integration of technology, patient safety, and caregiver interaction within the patient room. He noted that as next steps, the project team would be developing relationships with industry partners to build prototypes of specific room features that can be tested in the NXT lab, and ultimately, in real hospital settings.

It was a pleasure to see this incredible design work presented. What was even more gratifying to me, however, was to see so many people come together, bringing their energy and vision into one room, and talking with each other about what health care can be, not what is it today. It’s my greatest passion, and it’s exactly why we created NXT.