Events

There is increasing recognition and understanding of the impact built space has on people. Healthcare architecture has strongly advocated for patient-centered design, but can the resulting concealment of clinical spaces devalue the role of medical professionals? With a recent paradigm shift towards design quality measurement, has the social responsibility of health architects changed? Obligations to develop an ethically-based framework to structure design decisions and allocation discussions in healthcare architecture are explored.

Diana Anderson, MD, M.Arch, is a healthcare architect and a board-certified internist. She completed her medical residency training at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia University Medical Center. As a “dochitect”, Dr. Anderson combines educational and professional experience in medicine and architecture. She has worked on hospital design projects globally and is widely published in both architectural and medical journals, books and the popular press. She is a frequent speaker about the impacts of healthcare design on patient outcomes, staff satisfaction, and related topics. As an immediate past Fellow at the Harvard Medical School Center for Bioethics, she explores space design and ethics. She is currently a geriatric medicine fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.