2.F. Scientific session: Challenges in healthcare architectures
Authors:   Organised by: EUPHA-URB, -PMH, -ENV,   Chair persons: Stefano Capolongo (EUPHA-URB), Jutta Lindert (EUPHA-PMH)
Published: October 2024

The Workshop titled “Challenges in healthcare architectures” - proposed and developed by the three EUPHA Section: Urban Public Health (URB), Public Mental Health (MEN) and Environmental Health (ENV) - is aimed to foster the dialogue between designers (architects and urban planners), Public Health experts (operators, professionals and epidemiologists), general/sanitary Directors of healthcare facilities and medical staff, to establish a multidisciplinary approach for understanding together how to create and manage the healthcare facilities of the future. According to the main Conference topic “Sailing the waves of European public health: exploring a sea of innovation”, the workshop mainly addresses both the “Health care services and systems” and the “Health workforce, practice and training” EPH24 conference topics. The Workshops purpose is to explore the concept for the hospital of the future, that should be resilient to changes and capable of protecting different users’ health and tackle the transforming social, economic, environmental and epidemiological needs of the context in which they are located. As in many other spheres and economic activities, the pandemic accelerated the processes of innovation and digitization that had somehow already been activated. The healthcare issue, the use of smart devices for a dialogue between the healthcare professionals and the pervasive use of apps to monitor certain health parameters, are just some of the megatrends that were being observed and which have now necessarily entered into everyday life. In the same way, the hospital, which in the face of this gradual process of dematerialization and relocation of ‘softer’ clinical-diagnostic activities, reaffirms itself as a center of the highest specialty for the treatment and care of acute patients, for high-level clinical and experimental re-search, for diagnostics and more complex operations. At the same time, and finally, the hospital is inserted in a territorial healthcare facilities network, that should be planned, designed, and managed. The workshop program includes inputs which they argue current experiences, emerging practices and scientific outcomes related to the hospital design, planning and management sphere, coming from four different European countries. From designing to managing practices, in “Hospital Design and planning in the line of Foresight of Health Needs” and in “Sustainability in the Next Generation Hospital”. From digitalization in national resilience experiences, in “Digital Health Spaces in the City of Lisbon. The Role of Digitalization in linking Boundaryless Hospitals and Smart Health Cities” to novel approaches for specific disease, in “Building bridges: mobile mental health care units in four European countries”.

Key messages

• Explore the “hospital of the future” concept, resilient to changes, capable of protecting users’ health, and to tackle the transforming social, economic, environmental and epidemiological needs.

• Establish a multidisciplinary and territorial approach, for understanding together how to create and manage the healthcare network of the future.