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The ED of the Future: an Interdisciplinary Graduate Course in Healthcare Design
Author(s) -
Cowan David,
YiLuen Do Ellen,
Margolis Marilyn,
Zimring Craig,
Ackerman Jeremy
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
academic emergency medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.221
H-Index - 124
eISSN - 1553-2712
pISSN - 1069-6563
DOI - 10.1111/j.1553-2712.2009.00392_9.x
Subject(s) - presentation (obstetrics) , health care , triage , class (philosophy) , medicine , medical education , engineering management , computer science , engineering , medical emergency , artificial intelligence , economics , radiology , economic growth
Six faculty members from Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University School of Medicine, Emory Healthcare, and Perkins + Will created and taught a one‐semester course titled “The Emergency Department of the Future”. The goals of the course were to provide an environment for students to be exposed to the unique challenges of healthcare design, to experience and learn techniques for successful interdisciplinary design, and to create innovations with impact. Twenty graduate students representing five disciplines (architecture, health systems, human‐computer interaction, computer science, and systems engineering) participated in this class. The course included a series of didactic lectures covering a wide range of issues including architectural design of hospitals and emergency departments, observation techniques for working environments, electronic medical records, and patient‐centered care. Lecturers included emergency physicians, nurses, architects, human‐computer interaction researchers, and design specialists. Students developed problem statements along with prototype design solutions through these lectures, direct observation, and interaction with course faculty. The resulting projects include a mobile triage chair that takes vital signs, equipment sliders for easy functional transformation, an integrated lighting design, as well as patient assistants for self registration, communication, environmental control, and discharge support. The developed projects have generated ideas to improve emergency care that may be implementable commercial products as well as fundable projects for future research. The final presentation open house attracted over a hundred visitors from local and national healthcare facilities and industry. This presentation will highlight the structure and organization of the course as well as the resulting projects.