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Barun Pal Chowdhury
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In today’s world, hospitals have become a utilitarian environment rather than a place for healing and emotions, where treatment of a patient is carried out, away from family and friends. They have become strongholds which are more frightening than comforting to patients who come for treatment.
However, a heart-warming fact is that these institutions are slowly changing into centres of healing, by incorporating spacious Vedic-style gardens and parks, art displays, and other such elements dedicated towards the wellness of a patient. In other words, hospitals are changing from mere functional spaces to wellness centres. Thus, hospitals are effectively transforming into healthcare centres with specific areas for recreation of patients, places for receiving and waiting visitors, facilities for senior citizens, etc., all targeted towards making the treatment in a hospital a comforting experience and not a scary one, leaving a smile on the patients’ faces as well as on the visiting relatives.
One of the architectural historians and writers, Charles Jencks wrote in ‘The Architecture of Hospitals’, that “Architecture can raise the spirits and amplify the positive mood and ethos of an institution.”
To incorporate these new concepts, a radical change of thought process is required while designing and building healthcare facilities. And the good news is that architects are getting increasingly concerned with the need to design for these anticipated functional changes. Comfort of the patient is taking precedence over the bureaucratic style of designing. They are increasingly moving away from ‘rocket-launching stations’ to ‘healing centres’ or healing environments that incorporate a holistic approach. They are progressively looking at ways to combine new technology with old-world sensitivity of healing through nature. This would create an environment that will encourage a quick and peaceful recovery.
As hospitals move away from being mere functional spaces towards more specialised treatment and wellness areas with various departments like, outpatients and in-patient, emergencies, OT, ECG and X-ray department, ICU, radiology and other diagnostic centres, waste management, food management, laundering, etc., designing and construction of such healthcare centres have become more complex. Hence, there is a need in the healthcare industry to appoint experts and specialists who would understand the changing requirements of players to provide the right design, and quality for their infrastructure.
Designing and building such healthcare infrastructure is a complex task. Most of the times, when different entities handle the design and the construction phases, there is a mismatch in the design and the completed product. Now a new and fast evolving mechanism across the globe for delivering healthcare infrastructure is to ‘Design, Construct and Commission’ hospitals. This entire process is known as ‘Design and Build’ and it means that a single entity is entrusted with the entire process from design to completion and commission of the project. This provides a one-stop solution to the healthcare industry rather than a ‘Piece Meal Approach’ of constructing a hospital. Design and Build solutions consider all the construction-related issues during the designing stage which in turn considerably reduces the coordination clashes during the construction period. This results in reduction of rework at site, and this in turn ultimately leads to fast work, good quality and quantity, less escalations, less wastage and time reduction.
There are many benefits of using the Design-Build method in creating the new concept of healthcare infrastructure, namely:
- Increased time and cost efficiency – Integration of the various functions such as design, construction and engineering reduce changes, thereby decreasing the cost and time of the project. There is also reduction of potential claims and lawsuits after project completion as the Design-Build team resolves any issues during construction.
- Quicker communication – Turnaround time as well as approvals take less time since it’s the same team communicating with each other. Any design change carried out during construction can be discussed right away.
- Quality product – Continuous quality control and quality assurance by the design team ensures that quality is enforced during project execution.
Healthcare infrastructures which are wellness centres have been widely adopted by the Middle Eastern countries in a big way, where they believe in providing not only value for patients but also being family centric. They have embraced health not just healthcare. They strive for quality and excellence in their healthcare centres. Sidra Medical Centre and Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) in Qatar is an example of being one of the best healthcare centres in the Gulf countries.
These centres have everything under one roof and provide a one-stop solution for all matters related to health and research. They have adopted the Design-Build method for creating such infrastructure as this method was the only one which could and did give them the best results, which is apparent now when you see the final product!
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