设计重塑未来病房

    奎克称，吸引他加入这个项目的是现代医疗史上首次出现的理念，即一队设计师认真接受挑战，将技术和建筑整合到一个无缝环境中，而不是将一些已有的医疗技术重新用于现有空间中。他说：“其他时候我总能听到人们这么说，‘这就是未来的病房吗，好像没什么新鲜的地方啊’。而现在这个项目确实实现了飞跃，它将技术和建筑整合了起来，还将病房里所有常见的活动都纳入到了设计之中。”

    “2020病房”确实是各种技术、材料和即插即用功能高度整合的杰作，它既包含了一般病房常见的各种技术，又有各种旨在提高病人舒适度或医护人员工作效率的全新技术。比如，所谓的“病人环带”（patient ribbon）就从床头墙到天花板再到床尾墙把病床一路围绕了起来。床头墙中埋设了监测生命体征的仪器，还有氧气罐及其他必需的设备。病床上方的面板含有由病人控制的照明设施。床尾墙上装了一个显示器，它能用于和医生进行视频咨询，调看医院信息，还可以观赏娱乐节目（所有这些功能都通过一台平板电脑在病床上控制）。护理技术则包括一个洗手台，用于追踪仪器设备的内置无线射频识别（RFID）技术，以及用于降低医源性感染风险的仿紫外线消毒台。

    这些技术是由大大小小的二十多家公司提供的——欧司朗公司（Osram Sylvania）提供了一些照明设备，面料生产商美利肯公司(Milliken)提供了用于床单和抹布的定制抗菌面料，金霸王公司(Duracell)捐助了充电技术——而房间大量应用的是杜邦公司（DuPont）的可丽耐。它是一种无孔表面材料，设计团队之所以选它，是因为它便于清洁，而且可热成型，这就使房间里很少会有可供病菌繁殖的缝隙或接口。总的来看，“2020病房”的设计旨在解决当今医疗系统的一些突出问题：病人无法参与自己的治疗，医源性感染，医护人员效率低下，以及病人总体舒适度差。而这些问题会影响康复，同时让病房的环境更令人难受。

    惠特曼称，这就是为什么“2020病房”不是纯粹为了技术而打造的。所有要素都精心选择，合理配置，目的就是要让病人更好地参与治疗进程，同时提高医护人员的工作绩效和效率。这是一种系统方法——它早已在其他众多行业中用于提高效率了，但在基础医护领域却始终严重缺位，导致这个领域还停留在经常用笔和写字板来零敲碎打完成任务的水平上。惠特曼还表示，最重要的是，这是能影响行为和产出的设计。当前医疗领域中的固定成本和其他效率低下的现象常常超出个别医院的掌控范围，而通过设计提高的人员绩效能让医院管理者获得一个削减成本、同时提高护理水平的独特工具。

    What drew him to the project, Quirk says, was the idea that for the first time in the history of modern health care, a team of designers was being seriously challenged to integrate technology and architecture into a seamless environment rather than retrofit a handful of pre-existing health care technologies into a pre-existing space. "Every other time I've heard, 'This is the patient room of the future, there's nothing new about it," Quirk says. "This project really took a leap of faith in integrating technology and architecture and really incorporating all of the activities that will typically go on in a patient room into the design."

    Patient Room 2020 is indeed a highly integrated orchestration of technologies, materials, and plug-and-play capabilities, encompassing the customary technologies one would expect to find in a hospital room as well as wholly new ones aimed at enhancing patient comfort and care or caregiver efficiency. For instance, the so-called patient ribbon wraps all the way around the bed, from headwall to ceiling to footwall. The headwall contains the necessary machinery for capturing vital signs as well as any oxygen tanks or other hardware that might be necessary. The overhead panel contains patient-controlled lighting, while the footwall contains a display that can be used for everything from video-consulting with doctors to pulling up hospital information to viewing entertainment (all controlled from the bed via tablet computer). Caregiver tech in the room includes a hand-washing station, built-in RFID tech for tracking instruments, and simulated UV sanitation of workstations to cut down on the risk of hospital-acquired infection.

    The underlying technologies were provided by more than two dozen companies large and small -- Osram Sylvania provided some of the lighting, fabrics-maker Milliken customized antibacterial textiles for linens and scrubs, Duracell chipped in charging technology -- and largely packaged up in DuPont's (DD) Corian, a non-porous surface material selected by the design team for its ease of cleaning and the fact that it is thermoformable, leaving few seams or joints where bacteria might thrive. Taken altogether, Patient Room 2020 is designed to address some glaring shortcomings rife in the health care system today: a lack of patient engagement in his or her own treatment, hospital-acquired infections, caregiver inefficiency, and overall patient discomfort, which can distract from rehabilitation and generally can make hospital rooms miserable environments.

    That's why Patient Room 2020 isn't just technology for technology's sake, Whitman says. Each element was chosen for a reason and placed in the right location to enhance both patient engagement and caregiver performance and efficiency. It's a systems approach -- something that has long been employed to boost efficiency in other industries but has been sorely lacking in basic patient care, where things are often still done piecemeal with pen and clipboard. Most importantly, it's design influencing behaviors and outcomes, Whitman says, and in a health care environment where fixed costs and other inefficiencies are often beyond an individual hospital's control, enhanced human performance through design gives administrators a unique tool for cutting costs and improving care.