Imagine the hospital of 2020! I certainly can!

I’m at the airport in Austin, Texas, having just delivered the opening keynote for Facilities ’09: National Association of Children’s Hospitals Design conference.

The room was full of CEO’s, board members, architects, and managers responsible for transitioning the physical infrastructure of these facilities into the modern hospital infrastructure of the 21st century.

I’ve just discovered that someone from NACHRI is live-blogging the event, and they covered my talk. I’ll have more to write about this later, but there’s a quick summary of the challenges I raised to the crowd here.

Jim Carroll’s keynote at NACHRI: So the question becomes: what mindset should we have going forward, and what are we doing for the future?

• We need a relentless focus on market growth. There is an unprecedented opportunity for growth through increased efficiencies, cost savings and greening of facilities.

• The scope of the problem will drive a lot of innovative thinking, because only innovating thinking can keep pace, or get ahead of, change.
• We are reinventing the concept of a hospital. Whe hospital will increasingly become virtual as it extends its reach into everyday life. “The hospital as we know it is coming to an end.”
• Build up your experiential capital as well as your financial capital. If the world is changing so fast, experience is invaluable in navigating the complicated and ever changing landscape. Be afirmed to try new things.
• One of the increasing changes is digital technology moving off the plug and into everyday, everywhere life

“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the changes that will occur in the next ten years. Don’t let yourself be dulled into inaction.” — Bill Gates

You can access the full live blog below.

You can also read where I think we’ll be with health care in the future. The key for organizations struggling to get through this economic mess right now is to focus on the huge variety of future trends that will impact you, understand them, and innovate from them!

Think growth!

• It’s January 15, 2020: Do you know where your health care system is?
• Facilities ’09: Rethinking the hospital
• Live blog updates from Facilities’09: