The invisible future of healthcare

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Sterile, isolating, and stressful: Today’s hospitals can kindle deep discomfort. Because they must be designed adequately for everyone, they’re designed perfectly for no one. So, what would our healthcare experience look like if physical hospitals were to disappear altogether?

Artificial intelligence that is generative, predictive, and integrated, combined with the power of edge computing in every background device, will transform our very notion of hospitals. Healthcare will become a lifestyle so seamlessly woven into our daily experience that it will be invisible.

Why is this the future of healthcare?  The trends are already apparent:

• Evolving economics: As baby boomers transition to Medicare, millennials, Gen X and Gen Z are emerging as the primary healthcare consumers. These groups place an emphasis on convenience and personalization, and this social shift is influencing how we access care.
  
• Modern living: Biometric data collection is being increasingly integrated into our homes and daily routines, and predictive AI is streamlining diagnostics and preventing diseases.
  
• Converging technologies: Healthcare delivery has traditionally required specialized devices for every test and procedure, but the limitations of cost and size are fading. Advances in computation will converge functionalities, revolutionizing the patient experience in the process.

Strategies for success

In light of these trends, my firm has recently explored strategies for success in a changing healthcare landscape. They reflect our belief in a gradual transition toward decentralized healthcare and the integration of AI technology, celebrating our gradual societal progression towards an improved future, rather than a utopia that appears overnight. Here are some of these strategies.

• Lean into wearable technology. Soon, health data will be paired with pattern-recognition AI to identify and predict all risk factors for disease. This is a future inflection point where almost all healthcare becomes preventative medicine. For example, instead of learning about our heart disease after a cardiac event, AI will accurately warn us of our impending heart attack decades before it happens.

• Treat mental health as a community endeavor. The human body emits numerous indicators of psychological stress: elevated heart rate, tense muscles, and insomnia—which can be read by advanced biometric devices like an open book to our minds. Combined with large language model and diffusion model AI, a radical change in behavioral health could be at our fingertips. With AI-driven behavioral medicine available anywhere, anytime, communities could invest in public infrastructure—like augmenting parks to combine mental health with public green space—to increase accessibility and fight social stigma.

• Repurpose obsolete infrastructure: By 2051, gas stations may be obsolete, and diagnostic equipment that is expensive today will be cheaper, smaller, and more powerful. Repurposing existing gas stations—and other outdated infrastructure—into neighborhood health stations could efficiently disperse essential health services throughout communities.
  
• Create personalized care environments: Unbound by location, cost and data availability, we can enjoy more personalized healthcare. For example, combining a labor and delivery room with augmented reality will make birth more comfortable by bridging the personal environment of a home birth with the medical sophistication of a specialty clinic. Floor-to-ceiling digital screens that respond to cortisol levels to create a calming atmosphere while displaying critical health information would have positive health impacts and improve patient satisfaction.

• Integrate diagnostic screening into the home: Households will become data collection centers and bathrooms can become labs of the future by integrating AI into existing buildings. For example, imagine household appliances that track the type of food you keep on hand as a marker of your overall health or screen your biowaste for signs of sickness in real time. Your own digital health avatar will be updated every time you cook a meal or brush your teeth.

Today, a visit to the hospital entails finding a place to park in a busy lot, picking the right door to enter, and winding your way through confusing corridors past services you don’t need, and ride elevators with people who cough without covering their mouths. Designers and architects have an opportunity to design a better way of doing things.

It’s a safe bet the future of healthcare will be a messy evolution of technology, culture, and economy. Markets are demanding more personalized on-demand service, technology is getting smaller and cheaper every day, and AI continues to advance. As designers, we believe this leaves us free to envision healthcare first and foremost as experiences rather than buildings or places. By embracing solutions that are opportunistic and incremental, we can create a future where healthcare is invisible and omnipresent. As we move into a future where technology will diminish the constraining power of location, cost and data, designers must resolve to increase our commitment to human flourishing. We must work together to deliver healthcare that delights.

Mike Sewell is director of innovation at Gresham Smith.

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