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 The
combination of clinical care, research, and education in Centers of
Excellence creates an optimal environment that benefits clinicians,
researchers, staff members, patients, and their families. The
design concept enhances the interaction between researchers and
clinicians, which in turn increases opportunities for more direct
application of research findings to actual treatment and cures in
the delivery of patient care. This design concept also has
significantly increased fundraising opportunities for medical
centers and their affiliated medical schools across the country. By
incorporating this concept into major teaching hospitals, it is
possible to develop a tranquil and healing environment through
building and landscape design-improving the patients' understanding
of the research and healing process while providing a renewed sense
of hope to patients, families, and the community.
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Stacking Diagram -
Centers of Excellence |
Developing the Concept into Real
Design
The Child Health Institute of New Jersey is among the facilities
being built nationally to promote collaboration between experts in
research and clinical care. By putting technologically advanced
research laboratories and patient care facilities in the same
building, medical schools, philanthropists, and governments hope to
accelerate medical discoveries and create a shared vision between
physicians and researchers.
The Child Health Institute is a $72
million biomedical research and clinical care pediatric facility
that will benefit children throughout the Northeast. The Institute
is an independent research foundation, developed in conjunction
with the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School of the University of
Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. The new 150,000-square-foot,
six-story building will anchor the medical campus of Robert Wood
Johnson University Hospital, providing patient and staff access to
the recently completed Bristol-Myers Squibb Children's Hospital at
Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.
This complex, multidisciplinary building is
designed to create a gateway into the medical campus and provide an
opportunity for researchers, clinicians, children, and their family
members to meet one another and share their work, aspirations, and
hope. The building houses facilities for research, healthcare,
conferences, exhibitions, and dining. Visitors are invited to enter
the facilities from multiple directions on multiple levels. A
two-level lobby links the main entrance to the upper level
colonnade and courtyard while providing space in the atrium for
exhibits of researchers' discoveries in the fields of childhood
development and the prevention and cure of childhood diseases. As
patients and their families learn more about the in-house research
activities, their hope will grow.
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| Child Health Institute
of New Jersey |
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| Section Diagram - Child
Health Institute |
The Robert Wood Johnson Medical School's
Child Health Institute includes an ambulatory care center for
pediatric subspecialties, faculty offices for the pediatricians,
and a pediatric clinical research center. Each clinic suite is
designed to accommodate tertiary pediatric care, with larger exam
rooms and private preceptor areas in each exam cluster that support
patient privacy and medical education. Faculty offices are
separated yet adjacent to their respective outpatient clinic suites
for improved efficiency of professional staff.
Clinical Floor Plan - Child Health Institute
The project also includes three floors of research labs
and a transgenic vivarium, along with support, administration, and
conference space. The research floors are arranged to maximize the
use of space while enhancing the natural circulation of
researchers.
From Dreams to Reality
The Cancer Institute of New Jersey (CINJ) is another
successful Center of Excellence, with a program, layout, and design
similar to that of the Child Health Institute and others around the
nation. The mission of CINJ is to seek methods to prevent, detect,
and cure cancer; to educate professionals in the field of cancer
care and prevention; and to comprehensively treat cancer patients
and their families. The Institute has successfully integrated
cancer research and outpatient clinical care into a facility that,
in less than five years, has been designated as a National Cancer
Institute and has more than doubled its volume in clinical care and
research grants.
The original 68,000-square-foot CINJ
represents the collaboration of seven University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey Affiliated Hospitals. The Institute,
designed to accommodate 16,000
patients annually, treated 35,000 patients in 1999 as a result of
its state-of-the-art treatment programs and its success in turning
lab research into clinical applications.
The challenge for the Cancer Institute
project team was to provide a seamless addition that reinforces
both the clinical and research aspects of the facility while
creating a sensitive and healing environment for the patient and
family. The team accomplished through several design
approaches:
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| Clinical Floor Plan -
Child Health Institute |
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| Research Floor Plan -
Cancer Institute of New Jersey |
Layering the spaces from public to private-from the community
resource center to the patient spaces to the research
laboratory-fosters researchers' collaboration on new protocols and
enables patients to see active research taking place, providing
them with a heightened sense of hope for their own treatment and
for future cures.
Flexible interactive space shared by
researchers, clinicians, patients, and the community enhances
efficient communication within and between groups.
The tranquil and healing environment through
building design contributes both to the healing process and to
patients' understanding of the research of healing.
The 120,000-square-foot new addition,
currently under construction, continues a concept that has worked
extremely well in the original facility-making a visual and
physical connection between clinical care and research. For
example, a multistory atrium connects the laboratory spaces with
the clinical spaces below. Patients and family members confirmed in
focus groups that their hopes, and spirits, are raised by the sight
of research laboratories surrounding the open atriums. The design
concept also fosters a significant increase in communication and
collaboration among caregivers, clinical researchers, and basic
science researchers by providing formal and informal gathering
areas throughout the facility-including conference rooms, sitting
areas open to circulation, and multiple coffee/lunch
areas.
One of the most important design concepts was
to ensure that the addition accomplished a sense of "bigger but
smaller" from the patient/family perspective. This was accomplished
by creating treatment and exam suite clusters and sub-waiting areas
that will increase privacy as well as comfort levels. Prefect rooms
conveniently located throughout the exam suites provide private
areas for caregiver discussions with students, residents, and
researchers without compromising patient confidentiality. All
waiting areas feature views to an outdoor healing garden-a peaceful
buffer between the patients and the public that also directs
patients' visions outward toward their future.
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| Floor Plan - Cancer
Institute of New Jersey |
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| Construction Photo -
Cancer Institute of New Jersey |
The Future of Healthcare Delivery
Centers of Excellence focus on medical research, outcomes,
prevention, detection, treatment, and patient care through the
interaction of physicians, scientists, caregivers, and patients. At
such centers, patients and family members can better understand the
implications of basic research-previously "hidden" from patient
care areas-and this understanding provides increased opportunities
for fundraising from patients and families.
This growing trend has become a nationally
recognized concept as the National Cancer Institute, part of the
National Institutes of Health, has earmarked $360 million in
funding for multidisciplinary cancer centers in its 2004 budget.
This reinforces the recognition and reality of the development of
Centers of Excellence around the nation.
For both the New Jersey Medical School's new
University Hospital Cancer Center and the University of South
Alabama's new Cancer Research Institute, the same design concept is
being integrated into the new buildings, modeled after the example
of success set by other facilities. The future of healthcare and
the treatment of debilitating disease is in the hands of
researchers and clinicians alike-with hope for eventual cures
through increased communication and collaboration. Centers of
Excellence offer patients and their families hope-through the
knowledge that leading scientists are working on cutting-edge
research that may benefit them or their loved ones in the
future.
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