Innovation comes slowly to health care?

Together we can make a world of difference, but ... "Stick to the plan!"

Health care innovations: we keep close track of them. Together, we can create a world of difference, but... "Stick to the plan!" Arnold Sikkel, partner and architect at EGM, on why health care is so slow to adapt to innovations.

The summer holidays are an excellent period for reading books, nicely and quietly and exactly when you feel like it. Away from your iPhone or iPad, with their attention-demanding audio signals. Reading books on holiday is a wonderfully relaxing pursuit, even for architects with a busy practice. This year, I brought two books along. I've been reading one of them for a while. Its title is Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe, written by Norman Davies. It is a fabulous book, which discusses the development of Europe in the period from approximately 450 AD up to and including the medieval period. The book is almost 900 pages long and is quite a weight to hold in your hands. As a result of this, you read part of it, then put it down for a while. This summer, I read about the Kingdom of Aragon. This kingdom originated in Catalonia and stretched along the Mediterranean all the way to parts of Greece.

 

Breakthrough: From Innovation to Impact

There is an advantage to the book's being so heavy: it creates room for another book. The title of which is Breakthrough: From Innovation to Impact. It was a gift I received from Paul Baan. My colleague Victor de Leeuw and I met Paul Baan after an interview for BNR Radio, in which we expressed a number of statements with regard to our passion, "building for health care". Paul had heard that interview while driving his car, and had invited us for a discussion. During our discussion, Paul brought up that he is using the vehicle of The Owls Foundation as a platform for thinkers and doers from society to consider innovations. In the Breakthrough publication, a number of cases have been collected, detailing how innovations can be taken up and implemented.

 

Innovations in health care

My attention was drawn by innovations in health care. Experiments at the Mayo Clinic in the US and innovations in the Netherlands are linked and compared, illustrating that similarities and trends can be found in the innovative world of health care. Innovation comes slowly to health care, agonizingly so. But then, there is a lot at stake. Not just money, but reputations, too. It is reasonable that the older, most vulnerable patients receive the most attention in the world of health care, and as such require most time and effort. For me, it was a revelation to read about the thinking processes involved in health care innovation. Devising care pathways, involving family members in the care plan, mobilizing primary health care, smart application of e-Health and especially (!) not deviating from what has been previously agreed. Not by anyone. Subsequently, the results are astounding.

 

Our ambition

We, as architects for health care, encounter this same phenomenon in our projects. New ideas about the lay-out or design of a hospital ward or department can never be realized just like that. Many innovations in hospitals are based on organisational adjustments and changes. And these professionals, like many others, wish for many things - but never for things to change. Fortunately, there are exceptions. EGM wants to lead the way when it comes to thinking about modernization and innovation in health care; whether it be the structure of the outpatient clinic and its processes, the OT-complex or the hospital's nursing wards, for instance. Our latest projects attest to this dedication and ambition. For example, the new Reinier de Graaf Gasthuis in Delft, the Ikazia hospital and Erasmus MC in Rotterdam and the hospital on Curacao spring to mind. They prove the innovation, but in order to get there, much, much energy has been devoted to design and consultation.

Often, it sounds so simple - yet the descriptions show that years go by before the first results are produced. And that - the latter especially - is a shame, no least for the patients and employees.

Innovation to health care, as shown by our own practice, comes slowly, ever so slowly..