Flexible healthcare structures: analysis and evaluation of possible strategies and technologies

Hospitals are complex buildings because of their articulation, function, organization and technology equipment. Planning hospitals needs an interdisciplinary approach in order to organize efficiently the construction of qualitative and flexible units, that must be able to answer to all the requirements of different users and to the fast changes due to the research innovations. Human and care activities have a rapid progress, that creates a constant demand of modernizations of the hospitals and readjustment of the functional connections. Flexibility becomes the core of all the modifications depending on the progress of the medical science. The future challenge is to build structures that promote sustainable flexibility and also allow to achieve wellness in a synergic relation with complementary external activities. Therefore the research aims to identify lay-out models, technical and constructive solutions to guarantee different levels of flexibility. The research was made of different stages to define flexibility inside healthcare structures using strategies and technologies. The first step has followed the evolution of hospital structures during the centuries. It illustrates the most efficient methods and solutions used in last fifty years to achieve the flexibility. The second step was the analysis of the most important contemporaries healthcare structures. In that analysis, the hospitals will be compared through an evaluation matrix made by diferent flexibility levels that underlines the most efficient technologies and strategies used. At the end it was made a list of design indications focused on the definition of a new design approach that guarantees flexibility for these complex systems.