Emerging approaches to hospital care and hospital architecture

One cannot speak about emerging approaches to hospitals and hospital design without taking into consideration the ever-increasing changes in the structure of all aspects of today's society: cultural, economic, educational, scientific, social and technological. The design of health care is interwoven with all of these changes. Health facilities design is an outcome of a collective effort of all those involved in both the design and execution of projects. Success in laying down the features of new approaches to hospitals and their design depends to a large extent on our ability to confer and co-operate with each other, to learn from the past, to anticipate the needs of the future and to influence the direction of all developments, based on the strength of knowledge and creativity. In this article, both authors give their views on these issues.