Healthcare

Radical Flexibility: 5 Design & Tech Trends Improving Healthcare Spaces Today

By Mark Peters, Director of Healthcare for Tangram Interiors

The current US healthcare system, according to Deloitte, is “a collection of disconnected components including health plans, hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device manufacturers,” but, they predicted, by 2040 “the consumer will be at the center of the health model.” (1) Similarly, McKinsey & Company, in a January 2024 article, looked ahead to 2027, noting that healthcare services powered by adoption of technology will continue to grow – particularly those that offer measurable, near-term improvements for their customers. (2)

Tangram Interiors is in the unique position of designing progressive healthcare spaces, large and small, and is privy to the newest technology available for industry adoption, as well as the trends that facilitate growth. For healthcare providers seeking an edge, below are five trends and technologies worth exploring.

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1. Sound: The Great Healer

Psychology Today notes that many cultures – past and present – have intuitively and anecdotally understood the relationship between healing and sound, including Australian aboriginal tribes, who have used the didgeridoo as a sound healing instrument for over 40,000 years, and the Tibetans, who have singing bowls in ceremonies. Today, the wisdom of the ancients has been proven in the laboratory, and sound-based vibration treatment has been scientifically shown to help people with many types of pain, including arthritis, menstrual pain, postoperative pain, and knee replacement pain. (3)

Through a partnership with Moodsonic, Tangram helps physicians consider sound in the creation of their spaces. Moodsonic’s soundscaping product brings the benefit of natural sounds indoors “to combat stress and boost feelings of wellness, safety, restoration, and motivation,” and the company’s own research has shown sound’s positive effects on vital statistics, like blood pressure, as well as the healing process.

The system is more than sound masking. It incorporates a massive number of options, including sounds from nature, such as a babbling brook, a rain forest, or a crackling fire. First identifying distinct environments within a building, Moodsonic registers how much noise occurs in each zone, and then prescribes sounds to meet the needs of each zone. When in action, a sensor identifies how much sound is occurring in the space and the system responds by emitting sound based on that real-time information. Some spaces are designated to be quiet and provide a sense of calm, while other spaces can stimulate and energize, and all content is created generatively, which means it never repeats. An inadvertent benefit of the technology is risk reduction in the form of being able to identify random, loud noises or abnormal activity in a room and alerting employees to shut down or respond appropriately.

2. More Equitable Meetings

While the nature of work has changed – with hybrid here to stay – most healthcare workers do not have the luxury of remote work. Yet, they can benefit from innovations designed for hybrid workers. Steve Miller, Steelcase CIO, explains that “the space [i.e., a good one] has become a draw, bringing people into the office to do work better than they could at home.”

For years, Steelcase designers have been working with leading IT partners like Microsoft, Logitech, Crestron and Zoom, to improve office and meeting space environments. One important resulting innovation is the Ocular table, designed with a unique curved shape to create a more inclusive and collaborative meeting experience. In a healthcare setting, the Ocular table means that large meetings among several physicians can be equitable and efficient.

While seated on just one side of the long, curved table, participants view their remote colleagues on a large horizontal screen on a wall in front of them, and all participants are at eye level. The table’s design, with an outward-angled leg, allows for freedom of leg movement and allows individuals with mobility devices to easily join the conversation. A meeting at the Ocular table means everyone – whether in the room or remote – can contribute for greater collaboration, efficiency, and innovation.

3. More Empathetic Consults

Wainhouse Research conducted research toward the end of the pandemic that revealed the more online meetings people have, the more likely they are to feel socially isolated. In an attempt to resolve this, at least two notable vendors have been exploring ways to create deeper, more personal connections through high-end microphones and webcams. (4) The result is benefitting healthcare.

Ocular View, by Steelcase, in partnership with Logitech, is one powerful new technology bringing physicians and remote patients together in a new, more meaningful way. Going beyond the flatness of Zoom, the product, launched in 2023, completely changes the dynamic of one-on-one consultations. Instead of conducting a virtual call from a laptop, an individual sits on a special bench, in a partially enclosed booth, and the technology presents him or her, almost-real-life size, on the other side of the call.

Ocular View’s impact on medical treatment, when a patient is able to “show” a doctor what hurts or what is wrong, can be highly useful. The technology brings a realistic, human-to-human element to the interaction, which can be helpful when relaying or receiving a difficult prognosis and creating a more empathetic experience, in general.

4. The Flip of a Switch: Privacy without Sacrificing Transparency

One of the great balancing acts healthcare must perform is the balancing of a patient’s need for privacy with the need for transparency, in compliance with HIPPA. A clinic may desire a treatment space be transparent so administrators can monitor what’s occurring in the room; however, when the situation becomes critical or private, “drawing the curtains” may be necessary.

Today, KwickSwitch, powered by KwickScreen, offers an improved solution. The product is a film that can be installed on any smooth glass wall or pane, without the need for frosted or “fog-able” glass. It offers the flexibility to transform clear glass into an opaque wall in an instant, creating a private room and allowing a healthcare practitioner to respond immediately to a changing situation. Longer lasting and more hygienic than hospital curtains or blinds, it also offers the option of beautiful artwork or designs in the opaque mode.

Casper Cloaking Technology by Designtex, is a product similar in nature. The film, applied to a glass wall, functions much like a screen protector on a computer monitor. When private content is being displayed on a monitor, people outside of the room can look through the wall of glass to see everything inside the room except the content on the monitor. It’s another innovative way of creating transparency while providing privacy and is especially important in protecting patient information.

5. Taking Care of Your Own: Clinician Respite Areas

An NIH study, conducted June and August 2021, indicated that psychological-based suffering was no longer markedly concentrated in some specific bands of healthcare workers and concluded that it’s “essential to enhance health worker support strategies.” (5) Similarly, a 2022 CDC survey revealed that nearly half (46%) of health workers reported often feeling burned out, up from 32% in 2018 and nearly half (44%) intended to look for a new job, up from 33% in 2018. They warned that “conditions threaten the sustainability of the nation’s health care workforce, especially if systems do not take steps now to improve conditions for these essential workers.” (6)

To solve for this, healthcare institutions have started caring for their own on a higher level, creating valuable spaces that allow practitioners peace and respite within a busy day. Consider a nurse who might be coming off a 10-hour shift, having just dealt with difficult patient situations on top of stress in his or her personal life. To simply take a moment, choose from a selection of soundscape options, close his or her eyes, and regroup for just 10 minutes could change their day. The biophilia hypothesis suggests that humans possess an innate tendency to seek connections with nature and other forms of life. Designing spaces with this in mind means including natural light, sound, images, and colors to reduce stress in staff respite areas, in addition to comfortable seating.

Radical Flexibility or Bust

In the end, incorporating any of the above trends or technology requires healthcare leaders with a radical new mindset. Deloitte notes that “the health industry is on the cusp of a transformation that will affect all stakeholders. Incumbent players can either lead this transformation as innovative and well-connected market leaders or they can try to resist this inevitable change.” Like them, we envision an era of unprecedented opportunity and feel that “organizations that want to play a role in the delivery of care should determine how they can expand their points of access to get closer—both physically and digitally—to their customers,” (7) and, we add, ‘their staff.”

As organizations aim to balance HIPPA requirements, patient customization, and the staff’s mental health, among many other requirements, we agree with Tushar Gupta, healthcare leader at architecture firm Page, who said, “Healthcare spaces, then, need to be designed for radical flexibility.”

At Tangram, we welcome the opportunity to support your healthcare design needs and encourage you to visit our showroom in Dallas, where all of the above mentioned technologies can be experienced. It would be our privilege to help your healthcare organization achieve continued success through the most current design and technology.

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About Mark Peters, Tangram Director of Healthcare:

Mark has 20+ years of national Healthcare sales management experience and leads Tangram’s involvement, strategy, and approach to the Texas healthcare market. He’s focused on creating a deeper and more holistic understanding of how spaces come together. Mark can be reached at mpeters@tangraminteriors.com.