Excerpt:
But hospital administrators don’t always see the importance of having clinicians at the table early on, says Diana Anderson, a geriatric medicine fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, and founder of Dochitect, a health care design consultancy informed by both medicine and architecture.

Anderson also thinks it’s important for facilities like Rush to document operating procedures during the Covid-19 pandemic in order to inform hospital design going forward. “What will be important is for those facilities that have been built with pandemic preparedness in mind to study their outcomes during Covid-19,” Anderson says. This way, architects can turn to the research when “making the case for evidence-based design.”

Read the full article HERE.

*Article also featured in Smithsonian Magazine on April 17, 2020*

COVID-19 alternative care sites: Addressing capacity, safety, & risk challenges for our nation’s hospitals during a public health pandemic response

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) task force on COVID-19 Alternate Care Sites provides a new checklist tool for public officials to quickly identify buildings suitable to be adapted for patient care. The task force developed the tool using established healthcare design best practices and standards in combination with federal documents issued during the COVID-19 crisis. Additionally, professional input was provided from trained and experienced health care architects, engineers, life-safety consultants, front line health workers, and hospital facility operations.

Click HERE to view the COVID-19 alternate care sites assessment tool
Click HERE to view a comprehensive briefing of th task force’s initiatives

Excerpt: When considering locations that sick patients will be moving to in the coming weeks and months, it’s also important to consider the spaces used in the past to treat other infectious diseases. “We can also learn lessons from prior health care designs, such as the tuberculosis sanatorium,” says Diana Anderson, M.D., an internal medicine physician and a board-certified health care architect and a current clinical fellow at the University of California San Francisco. “These facilities were initially designed so that the building itself could be used as a form of treatment, given the lack of pharmacologic treatments at the time. Similar to the scenario we face with COVID-19, fresh air, ventilation, and isolation are key factors in controlling the spread, all of which have connections to the built environment.”

Read the full article HERE.

The built environment is a critical part of pandemic solutions and emergency preparedness.

Excerpt: Architects in general, and specifically board-certified healthcare architects, are key and valuable resources for rapid adjustments to current hospital and non-hospital infrastructure – repurposing old healthcare buildings, erecting temporary structures, and considering emergency preparedness in our building’s codes and design guidelines.  Current space utilization in hospitals can be quickly evaluated by these experts to maximize existing areas for use.

Read our complete Open Letter on Architecture and Pandemic Preparedness HERE.

**Also featured in Architect Magazine and Canadian Architect in addition to SALUS Global Knowledge Exchange**

Excerpt: Working at the intersection of architecture and medicine, Dr. Diana Anderson — both a healthcare architect and a board-certified internist — has a unique perspective on how buildings can influence healing and well-being for both patients and healthcare providers.

Founder of Dochitect, a collaborative model for approaching healthcare design from both fields simultaneously, Canada-born, California-based Anderson champions a refocusing of the built environment from being mere backdrops for medical encounters and toward settings that are humanistic and solution-based. Here, she shares insights on how architecture can promote healing.

Read the full article HERE.

Dochitect is interviewed about health design ideas for an aging population.

Older adults represent a large share of patients at doctors’ offices, clinics and hospitals. So why haven’t these facilities created environments they can navigate easily?

Read Judith Graham’s column in Kaiser Health News HERE about why it is time for a change.

Click here to read the Opinion piece

Excerpt:
“Did the ‘Bauhaus’ movement influence hospital design? Yes. Tony Monk… claims that ‘it (hospital design) was based on the then Modern Movement principles that form follows function’… The Bauhaus endures because its principles can be boiled down to universal ideas: functionality, simplicity and innovation.”

Dochitect is referenced in this Editorial:
“Like many things from music to furniture not everybody approved the Modernist movement. Some believed that hospital design had become ‘too clinical’ and lacked ‘humanity’. Dr Diana Anderson, an architect and physician, has been in the forefront in trying to increase awareness of the importance of including staff and patients’ wellbeing into hospital design. I fully agree with Dr Anderson and tried to enhance the environment in The National Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in St James’ Hospital some years ago.”

Read the full text HERE

Fig.1 from: The Bauhaus: its influence on hospital design and wine labels

Dochitect was interviewed by ACP Hospitalist on the topic of clinicians and design!

Excerpt: Researchers from health care and design backgrounds have been increasingly focusing on how the layout and allocation of space in hospitals can promote the well-being of both patients and clinicians.

Read the article here.

Dochitect is quoted in this commentary piece on physicians and their take on Quality of Life (QoL) of patients:

“Hospital design has recently come under scrutiny within  the context of QoL. Diana Anderson, an MD and architect, has spearheaded a movement that hopes to stimulate an interest  in hospital design with a view to making hospitals more pleasant places in which to be a patient and for health care workers to carry out their daily work.”

Read the article here