Designing future healthcare facilities to cope with pandemics and other health crises

WHILE Covid-19 has wreaked havoc on most countries, the global economy, social ecosystems and even mental wellbeing, the impact on healthcare from both a physical and systems perspective cannot be underestimated.

From a physical sense, hospitals struggled from the outset to cope with the sheer volume of patients who were affected by Covid-19, as most are simply not sized to accommodate such an overwhelming patient load. In many countries, this led to various attempts to help the system deal with the inevitable future patient volume - for example, the phrase "flatten the curve" was coined in certain countries to help reduce the burden on hospitals by evenly spreading the number of patients over a longer period of time. However, even if there was enough physical space just to accommodate the patient numbers, there are many other issues in the design of our healthcare environments which impact the delivery of appropriate care to these patients.

CHALLENGES OF PROVIDING CARE