Australian Health Design Conference 2024

We often discuss harnessing innovation, optimal performance, burnout, and well-being, but to truly understand these dynamics, we must debunk myths surrounding creativity and how the mind operates. Expansive potential can be unlocked by reframing what creativity is and nurturing the conditions that foster it. The rewards are both personal and collective.

In this session, we will explore how to recognise ‘flow’ states and establish environments that support our unique creative signatures. Drawing on examples from neuroscience, creative cognition research, and health psychology, we will shift our understanding of what happens under our "bone helmet". Additionally, we’ll investigate the vital relationship between play and neuroplasticity, revisiting metaphors of the left and right hemispheres and how they’ve shaped our concepts of intelligence.

This dynamic and interactive session will leave you with practical tools and actions to transform ideas and aspirations into habits. By practising these, we can build a more empathetic vision of flourishing, where cumulative shifts are mind-expanding, energising, and connecting.

Using the Yutjuwala Djiwarr Aged Care project as a case study, this presentation highlights new directions in culturally appropriate aged care for First Australians. The project is deeply connected to Country, with culture placed at the heart of the community. It simultaneously provides best-practice aged care and culturally appropriate spaces, creating a balance that is critical to positive care outcomes.

This approach offers valuable lessons for future aged care projects, including those for First Nations communities, as demonstrated in collaboration with Kaunitz Yeung Architecture.

Design standards, guidance, and planning procedures for healthcare infrastructure are common worldwide. These documents are increasingly prescriptive, determining the size of hospitals, spatial organisation, engineering systems, room layouts, and the equipment provided. This framework gives clients confidence in procurement, delivers equity across the system, and ensures robust compliance. However, it also stifles the agility, contingency, and innovation needed to develop buildings capable of meeting changing population needs, climate change, and rapidly advancing technologies in artificial intelligence, health, and digital communications.

Are we on the right track?

This presentation traces the development of design standards, starting from Florence Nightingale’s Notes on Hospitals (1863), through post-war modern hospital development in North America and Europe, and the emergence of the NHS. Common themes of standardisation, economy, and improved clinical outcomes run through each generation of standards. However, over time, we have accumulated an edifice of documentation that is tried, tested, failed, and now largely inappropriate for a rapidly changing future.

What sort of guidance and standards do we need to develop the next generation of healthcare infrastructure?

In recent discussions about the future of hospitals, technology and qualitative requirements have often been emphasised, while the impact of typology and form is overlooked. However, factors such as location, site selection, urban design, and construction can significantly influence built forms, potentially even more than clinical and operational needs.

This presentation addresses key issues such as the lack of daylight in hospital design, a problem persisting into the 21st century, as well as the ongoing challenge of flexibility. Other critical factors include accessibility, wayfinding, and the role of private transport. By comparing two hospitals conceived 50 years apart, we will examine whether their similarities are superficial or fundamental, and what lessons can be learned for future hospital design.

This research, based on international case studies and empirical analysis, will be presented for the first time in Australia.

This panel will bring together government leaders to explore one of the core themes of the conference: how to build better healthcare infrastructure with fewer resources. The discussion will focus on strategies for minimising environmental impact through the use of sustainable construction practices, refurbishment, and recycling. Panelists will share insights into policy initiatives and practical examples of how governments are addressing the need for improved healthcare facilities while reducing resource consumption.

For many years now, the concept of patient-centred design has been used to empower patients and carers to be more engaged in their own care, with the design of health facilities shifting to allow this. Beginning in Canada with the tribal considerations of the Inuit people, designers in all countries are now considering their indigenous populations in this engagement. In Australia, designers are beginning to engage earlier and more frequently with First Nations people and to understand how this engagement can provide places of self-healing for all. This panel discussion incorporates views from the Architect, Landscape Architect and Indigenous Engagement consultant, examining inclusions within the design for elements that go beyond artwork to include façade materials and colours, site hydrology, plant selection and placement, circulation pathways and building themes.

The Macarthur Health Precinct (MHP) is a multi-stage development designed to provide much-needed healthcare services to the rapidly growing Macarthur region in Sydney. Campbelltown City Council has partnered with GenesisCare and Northwest to create a health and wellness precinct for the Campbelltown and Macarthur catchment area. This innovative partnership model has allowed the council to secure a development partner, transforming underutilised land near the public hospital and Campbelltown CBD into a hub for health and education.

The first stage of the precinct is the GenesisCare Integrated Cancer Centre, which offers a range of services including radiation and medical oncology, integrated diagnostics, a wellness centre, theranostics, clinical trials, and research. The centre opened to patients in March 2024. The second stage involves the development of a Short Stay Surgical Hospital, designed with flexibility to accommodate a variety of health, research, and education uses, such as specialist consult suites, clinical trials, allied health services, GP practices, medical imaging, and pharmacy.

Future plans for the precinct include expanding the Short Stay Surgical Hospital into a Private Hospital with overnight capacity, adding additional parking, and further developing research and education facilities to complement the clinical services offered within the precinct.

The Care is Care Australasian collaborative study brought together a wide range of healthcare organisations, advocates, and planners to explore innovations in virtual care. In 2023, the study group visited virtual health programs across North America, Europe, and the UK to learn how leaders in these regions are scaling digital healthcare to meet growing demand amidst workforce shortages.

This session outlines the key lessons learned from integrating digital technology into frontline care across diverse settings. We’ll explore how these leaders applied adaptive innovation frameworks to test and prototype new ideas, improving clinical outcomes and patient experiences, while supporting human-centred facility design. The insights gained are now being applied to health projects in Australasia, delivering measurable impacts.

In this panel discussion, experts will examine the evolution of virtual care models in Australia. The conversation will explore how these models were established, their current progress, and the challenges and opportunities they present. The panel will focus on how virtual care is redefining healthcare delivery, challenging traditional methods, and offering new solutions to meet the growing demand for accessible, effective healthcare. Panelists will share insights into the future direction of virtual care and its potential to reshape healthcare systems.

Chloe Piper’s thesis focuses on designing healthcare environments for trauma. While trauma-informed care is advancing within health services, a corresponding approach to building design remains in its early stages. This gap exists despite significant evidence showing that physical environments influence health outcomes.

Drawing on new understandings of the interrelationship between mind, brain, and body, Piper’s PhD research explores how scientific findings can inform architectural design that is sensitive to the impacts of trauma and responsive to the needs of individuals in recovery. The research seeks to answer the question: How can healthcare architecture play an active role in trauma recovery?

The study addresses several key areas, including the challenges of working within a science-based healthcare paradigm, the limitations of evidence-based design, and the need for more research into trauma-informed architectural approaches. Piper’s research contributes to a new paradigm for architectural design that is generative and supportive of healing.

We set out to create specialist hospitals dedicated to complex head and neck, spinal, and vascular surgery, integrating sustainability principles to enhance healing. Traditional hospitals often have high carbon emissions due to significant energy and water consumption. Our goal was to develop a sustainable healthcare facility that prioritises the well-being of patients and staff, while supporting the environment and surrounding communities.

Central to the design is the visual connection between the human body and nature, as nature symbolises growth and healing. Research shows that natural light not only accelerates patient recovery but also enhances the well-being of healthcare professionals. Green design elements contribute to faster recovery rates, reduced pain medication use, lower secondary infections, and shorter hospital stays. Over 92% of bedded areas have external views, and a day-lit atrium provides further benefits.

The Nature + Nurture concept integrates biophilic design and evidence-based strategies to enhance the well-being of both patients and staff, delivering functional, sustainable, and aesthetically pleasing healthcare facilities.

For First Nations people in Australia, Country is not only a physical place but also a cultural, spiritual, and ancestral connection. BVN’s Designing with Country framework guides how we engage with First Nations communities and contexts, ensuring that each project acknowledges its specific Country and its people.

Hospitals, when designed with this framework, go beyond meeting clinical demands. They become places of emotional support, fostering a sense of belonging and promoting well-being. This approach contributes to closing the gap in healthcare outcomes for First Nations communities.

The framework is built around three key themes: early community engagement, which fosters understanding and connection to history, Country, and place; integrating sustainable materials and Indigenous connections to the land; and using an Opportunities Lens to explore spatial settings, material palettes, and energy efficiency. By embedding these elements into hospital design, we create spaces that honour both Country and community.

Clinical spaces are critical to delivering safe and effective healthcare services. However, few sustainable tools exist to help decision-makers optimise the use of these spaces. This research demonstrates how low-cost, privacy-preserving, non-contact sensor technologies, deployed over 25 months in a live multidisciplinary clinic, can support decision-making regarding the allocation of spatial resources. Feedback from healthcare staff was gathered to assess the appropriateness and acceptability of introducing space-monitoring sensors into clinical environments. By optimising space utilisation, access to healthcare can be improved, while reducing overall costs.

As the future of work evolves, humans and machines are increasingly working together to improve processes and outcomes. In CSSD/RUMED environments, robots are transforming how reusable medical instruments are cleaned, disinfected, and sterilised. These automated systems create a safer and healthier workplace by improving workflow, reducing the risk of injuries caused by repetitive lifting and handling of heavy instruments and trays, and supporting better outcomes for both staff and patients.

Hospitals, with their complexity and scale, are best conceptualised as ‘little cities’. This urban design approach humanises their scale, makes the design process more accessible by breaking the hospital down into ‘buildings within a building’, and creates a framework for future growth and change.

In my recent book, Big House Little City: Architectural Design through an Urban Lens (Routledge 2023), I trace this idea back to Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, who proposed that cities could be viewed as big houses, and houses as little cities. I bring this concept into modern healthcare, with examples of projects that exhibit strong urban forms and extensive user participation.

The session will focus particularly on the National Children’s Hospital in Dublin, a large paediatric teaching and research hospital nearing completion, whose scale and range of uses make it both a literal and metaphorical city.

Healthcare infrastructure projects are complex, involving numerous stakeholders and services. Many projects often start from scratch, duplicating processes and potentially repeating past mistakes. This can lead to ambiguity about affordability until well into the design process, resulting in cost-cutting measures that compromise project outcomes.

To address these challenges, Mott MacDonald developed the Healthcare Configurator, which offers an innovative approach using intuitive tools and automated processes. This model provides clarity in the early stages of project development, enabling decision-makers to make informed choices and avoid common pitfalls.

The Healthcare Configurator includes four essential elements in infrastructure planning: demand and capacity modelling, schedule of accommodation, cost schedules, and massing and stacking. This session will explore the concept, design, and benefits of the Healthcare Configurator, highlighting its value to clients and the healthcare design industry.

This panel outlines the value of establishing a professional association for Health Planners in Australasia. Health planners play a critical role in the effectiveness of health service delivery across Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. They provide professional advice, unify information from multiple professions, and translate a cohesive body of knowledge into future service delivery and infrastructure solutions.

Drawing on their expertise, health planners combine clinical, demographic, workforce, health economic, architectural, and technological approaches to health service and infrastructure planning. Their contribution is key to establishing resilient and sustainable health systems that respond to the specific needs of diverse populations.

In an often fragmented health system, this presentation highlights the importance of health planners and their potential to shape a more effective and cohesive future for healthcare.