Responding to change is not easy with healthcare facilities, according to an article from Building Operating Management on the FacilitiesNet website. One of the biggest sources of change is advances in healthcare technology.
“Technology is evolving at an incomprehensible speed,” said Tim Krawetz, senior principal at Syska Hennessy.
Those changes present a dilemma to healthcare facility managers. A hospital building, which can take five or six years from planning to occupancy, is bound to encounter technology refinements, or completely new technologies “may just show up,” said Krawetz.
In this environment, facility managers must ensure that their new healthcare facilities are flexible enough to accommodate new technologies, while still meeting familiar requirements for energy efficiency, code compliance, and patient/staff comfort, plus new demands for resilience.