E13 – Balancing Prototype and Identity: Designing the Next Era of Inpatient Care at OhioHealth

Healthcare delivery is rapidly evolving, yet many facilities remain constrained by static interior construction that requires demolition to change. Advances in diagnostics, biotechnology, and clinical care demand adaptable environments, but projects still default to deck-to-deck drywall assemblies rooted in outdated assumptions. This approach embeds avoidable disruption, downtime, infection-control risk (ICRA 2.0), and predictable obsolescence into patient care spaces.

This session explores how healthcare organizations can mitigate these risks by transforming static facilities built using conventional drywall with adaptable, high-performance manufactured interior systems. Presented from owner, acoustician, GC, and prefab expert perspectives, the panel challenges long-held beliefs with real-world outcomes and acoustic data to demonstrate how these systems meet performance requirements while improving speed to market, reducing disruption, and protecting revenue.

Healthcare environments are increasingly influenced by innovations emerging far beyond the healthcare sector. As expectations for hybrid diagnostics, digital integration, and elevated user experience grow, healthcare can gain valuable insight by examining how other industries are adapting to similar pressures. We will bring together leaders from logistics, aviation, and critical facilities to explore the trends reshaping their markets—and how these forces can inform the next generation of healthcare design.

The program will begin with short presentations highlighting key shifts and trends in each market, including safety and security practices, flow and logistics optimization, user‑centered experience design, and the integration of digital systems. Each sector offers unique perspectives on how people move, interact, and experience services across rapidly evolving physical and digital environments.

Grounding these insights, a healthcare client will present a forward‑thinking greenfield campus designed with flexibility to support changing clinical needs while advancing the organization’s broader mission. These insights will then anchor a dynamic panel discussion that aims at what ideas are able to be implemented and how it can translate into healthcare.

By drawing parallels across sectors, attendees will gain practical pathways to enhance patient experience, improve operations, and create more adaptable healthcare spaces.

Healthcare systems are increasingly using templated-based design approaches to deliver hospitals faster while keeping safety, consistency and human-experience at the forefront. This session examines how University Health implemented a single templated design model across two community hospitals, University Health Palo Alto and Retama, currently under construction in Texas. 

Developed by ESa in partnership with Marmon Mok and an integrated engineering team, the project standardized patient care environments, interior design selections, clinical workflows and device locations while allowing targeted flexibility. The template enabled a speed-to-market delivery strategy, including expedited early-release packages that allowed both hospitals to be stacked in construction, with the second campus lagging strategically and adapting to site conditions without redesigning the core hospital. 

Because the design was templatized, the team implemented design constraints to: maximize MEP system sizing efficiencies including a maximum 30 degree building rotation on each site; provide infrastructure flexibility for future expansions, adapt design for high-rise conditions and variations required by local authorities, while maintaining identical manufacturers and consistent device locations within patient rooms. Early-release planning also helped mitigate equipment lead-time risks during construction. 

This session also highlights how integrated MEP and lighting strategies reinforce standardized environment and support human experience. A brief interactive QR-code demonstration will allow attendees to explore how lighting design was embedded into the prototype to enhance visual comfort, usability and safety.