The ability to quickly access information and identify who knows what—and who needs to know what—can mean the difference between life and death in medical situations. To this point, the healthcare industry relies on patient records and charts to track and manage individual care. It’s a holistic approach where no one person is responsible for “knowing” it all. Rather, many hospitals use sophisticated knowledge management systems that capture information from all subject matter experts in one place.
Similarly, in architecture the difference between a successful and unsuccessful design project can be the team’s ability to draw on each other’s experience. Like medicine, our field is comprised of experts, generalists, and everything in between. The design documents we develop are our most common means to capture critical information, but even the best drawing sets can only portray a moment in time. For example, how many different setups must a certain operating room allow for? If the bathroom in a hospital room moves from the headwall to the footwall, how does that affect the patient’s likelihood of falling? The answer to these complex questions requires experienced evaluation across a huge range of criteria, from technical to operational factors. We turn to our experts for help.