Healthcare is made up of complex services involving numerous professional roles grouped according to their professions. Each division of the organization has acquired more and more autonomy in favor of a specialized management. Healthcare professionals tend to focus on handling the activities under their responsibility and rarely observe and supervise all the phases of the “Patient journey”.
“Placing the patient at the center of the hospital” – is certainly a good objective, but it is not enough. The vision belongs to times that are on their way out, but which still takes its toll. Coining an expression from the educational context, it is necessary to introduce the idea of a “flipped hospital”, where it is no longer the hospital or the patient which models the treatment procedure, but the person, as a whole. Today there is no longer an identification between space and function and this has overturned all our traditional identification strongholds: office-work, shop-purchase, school-learning, hospital-care.
We must not identify the space – the hospital – with the function – the treatment, but we also must not identify the person with a role which he/she momentarily performs.
In fact, being a patient is a moment of life which must not be “sectioned off”, if we do not want to end up identifying the person with the illness. The person is a patient, but continues to be a parent, child, worker, friend, brother, etc.
This awareness connects medicine with wellness and well-being. The treatment becomes a journey which begins with the daily attention for our well-being. The hospital becomes a phase of the critical moments of this journey and must be designed in relation to the person, as a whole.
Thanks to the connection between the physical and the digital world and to a series of instruments enabled and made available by this convergence, it is finally possible to accompany the person throughout the journey. We can now design experiences and services in places which are materially connected with the needs of the person, who can momentarily be a patient, but who must never stop being an individual.
Tailor-made experiences, places and services corresponding in a clear and responsive manner to the real needs of the person.
