E30 – It’s All About Outlets: Aligning Technology, Infrastructure, and Medical Equipment Planning

This session examines the renovation of two vacant behavioral health floors totaling 14,600 square feet in the Wright Saunders Building at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. Faced with an aggressive schedule and significant infrastructure constraints, the project team adopted a highly collaborative, human‑centered design approach to transform outdated spaces into modern medical‑surgical units that support patient experience, staff efficiency, and care delivery.

Originally envisioned as a traditional renovation, the project evolved to integrate smart patient room technologies based on insights from multidisciplinary stakeholder engagement. Speakers will discuss how design and planning decisions informed the integration of digital care boards, outside‑the‑door displays, automated lighting, nurse call systems, and building automation—while addressing implications for room layout, visibility, coordination, and workflow.

The session will highlight key design and delivery challenges, including added scope and extended lead times for critical infrastructure such as a new air handling unit and multiple automatic transfer switches. Presenters will share how early release packages, prefabrication, and real‑time collaboration enabled design alignment and schedule continuity under supply‑chain pressure.

Attendees will gain actionable design strategies for applying human‑centered principles to fast‑tracked healthcare renovations, balancing technology integration, infrastructure reliability, and patient‑centered outcomes in complex clinical environments.

Healthcare systems face a persistent labor shortage amid rising patient acuity and increasing complexity of clinical care. Contributing factors include physical and emotional demands, time constraints, and the growing burden of administrative tasks that reduce direct patient care, leading to decreased professional fulfillment and workforce attrition. Supporting frontline clinicians requires a systematic evaluation of care delivery models, workflows, and the built environment.

This project examines the integration of advanced digital technologies within a newly constructed hospital designed to enhance staff efficiency, patient safety, and clinician resilience. Months prior to design and construction, a multidisciplinary team strategically planned a digitally advanced facility incorporating artificial intelligence, natural language processing, predictive analytics, and enhanced electronic medical record functionality. These technologies were embedded within clinical workflows to increase staff face time with patients while improving operational efficiency.

A post-occupancy facility performance evaluation was conducted using a multi-method approach to assess the impact of technology integration on patient, family, and staff experience, as well as care provider resilience and retention. Findings highlight the role of intentional digital design in supporting frontline clinicians and inform best practices for aligning technology, workflow, and the built environment to address workforce sustainability in acute care settings.

Artificial intelligence has rapidly transformed architectural visualization, offering unprecedented opportunities for healthcare designers to communicate complex clinical environments, engage diverse stakeholders, and explore design solutions rapidly. This session provides a practical overview of current AI tools for architects and how they're being applied specifically to healthcare design challenges.

Participants will explore advanced AI platforms including node-based workflows (ComfyUI, Automatic1111), integrated design tools (Veras, Hypar), real-time rendering with AI enhancement (D5 Render, Enscape AI features), and AI-powered video generation (Runway, Luma, Pika, Sora). 

Through healthcare project examples and demonstration, this session examines AI's practical applications across design phases—from early programming visualization and concept exploration to client storytelling and competition submissions. Critically, the presentation addresses maintaining design quality and authorship: How do we ensure AI-generated imagery accurately represents clinical requirements? What are the limitations and ethical considerations? How do we integrate these tools without compromising design rigor or misrepresenting healthcare environments?

Attendees will gain strategies for incorporating AI into healthcare design practice while preserving the specialized knowledge and human judgment that defines excellent healthcare architecture.