An escalating factor affecting the fundamental ability for Canadian healthcare institutions to provide aid to their respective communities is the growing scarcity of available physicians and nurses. This problem becomes intensified when considering the geographical landscape of urban density, in which more rural communities experience increased difficulty in staff retention. Through the speculation on the digitization of healthcare and our dependency with future automated technologies, we will be able to address healthcare practitioner shortages in rural hospitals by encouraging a hybridization of both in-person and automated practices.
This project argues for a more radical approach to automated practices being integrated into the planning of healthcare institutions as a means to create more healing-centric environments for patients, and more desirable working conditions for healthcare practitioners. Through the re-imagining of resource distribution, medical resources are automated below the patient level through the use of automated guided delivery vehicles. Healthcare practitioners are able to call items directly to patient rooms, or to dedicated spaces across the hospital, reducing time away from the direct care of patients.
As we are facing a more technological future, we need to evaluate our relationship with such digitized trends. Contrary to the typical perception that an increased reliance in technology will create more sterile and lifeless spaces, by holistically integrating these practices with building design, we can in fact produce the opposite. We need to instead view these automated technologies not as a burden, but as an architectural opportunity to create better, and more healing-centric environments
Healing Village
HOLISTIC INTEGRATION OF AUTOMATED PRACTICES
RE-IMAGINING RESOURCE DISTRIBUTION
ENGAGEMENT WITH FUTURE TECHNOLOGIES