Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool (Image: NHS Forest, Centre for Sustainable Healthcare)
1: An ecosystem for integrated care
A consistent finding across our international visits is the transformative impact of family-centred, integrated models of care.
Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool is setting a precedent with double-bed parental accommodation in each neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) room, keeping families united throughout the most critical phases of care.
The Grange University Hospital in Wales exemplifies the benefits of co-locating maternity, neonatal, and diagnostic services, reducing the need for inter-hospital transfers and ensuring continuity of care through adjacent clinical services.
These models advance the delivery of holistic, multidisciplinary care, with physical design supporting seamless collaboration between clinical and non-clinical teams. In Australia, the Queensland Children’s Hospital has demonstrated the value of this integrated approach, combining paediatric services and support facilities under one roof for cohesive care.
Moving forward, women’s and babies hospitals must be planned as a unified care ecosystem with the flexibility to meet evolving clinical practices, support family involvement, and enhance the continuum of care from antenatal to neonatal stages.
Ireland’s New Children’s Hospital, currently under construction.
2: Prepping for the future + new tech
High-performing hospitals are not defined solely by their design. On our visits we were reminded of the pivotal role of simulation-based commissioning and operational readiness planning.
At Alder Hey, extensive mock clinical scenarios were conducted in the new NICU to test clinical workflows, equipment configurations, and pendant systems, ensuring teams were proficient in new technologies prior to go-live.
Dublin’s New Children’s Hospital incorporated full-scale patient journey simulations and emergency response drills in its phased commissioning, validating the design under real-world conditions. This robust approach ensures design intent translates into operational performance.
Simulation exercises not only refine spatial configurations but also optimise process flows, test wayfinding systems, and calibrate environmental settings. Australian exemplars like the Sunshine Coast University Hospital have embraced similar frameworks, using simulation to evaluate clinical pathways and operational protocols.
Embedding these strategies into the commissioning phase is now considered an essential component of hospital delivery, mitigating risk and ensuring that both clinical and non-clinical teams operate effectively from day one.
The array of integrated art at Oxford Children’s Hospital in the UK
3: Embracing art, nature and play
Environments that reflect the emotional dimensions of healthcare have become hallmarks of best-practice design. At Oxford Children’s Hospital, a sophisticated art integration strategy has transformed sterile corridors into vibrant, engaging spaces through large-scale murals, ceiling-mounted artworks, and narrative-based art trails. These interventions not only bring visual delight but support intuitive wayfinding and help reduce anxiety for patients and families.
Similarly, Alder Hey’s “hospital in the park” concept demonstrates the power of integrated landscape, blurring the boundary between building and nature to maximise daylight and offer outdoor spaces that enhance wellbeing. Both the Queensland Children’s Hospital and Sunshine Coast University Hospital exemplify this ethos, with generous atrium spaces, landscaped courtyards, and green terraces. Biophilic design principles and curated art programs that elevate the therapeutic quality of healthcare spaces will continue to play a vital role in future facilities.
Places for kids to play at Queensland Children’s Hospital (here and at top)
4: Breakout spaces that keep staff close to care
The wellbeing of health professionals is critical to delivering safe, efficient and high-quality care. International precedents consistently highlight the importance of decentralised support spaces located at the point of care. Alder Hey revealed that ward-level breakout spaces were far more effective and utilised than large, centralised staff hubs. This shift towards localised respite and support areas enables clinical and non-clinical teams to remain close to operational zones, improving responsiveness and informal collaboration.
At the Flinders University Health and Medical Research Building, quiet zones, retreat spaces, and shared hubs within high-intensity clinical settings promote resilience and teamwork. These decentralised planning strategies deftly balance operational efficiency with the human needs of healthcare teams.
Breakout space at the Flinders University Health + Medical Research Building
5: Modular matters
Modular construction and flexible design have emerged as critical tools for futureproofing hospital infrastructure. At the Grange Hospital around 50% of its building components were manufactured off-site, including bathroom pods, façade panels, and mechanical risers. This helped accelerate delivery and improved quality control, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dublin’s New Children’s Hospital also employed prefabricated bathroom units to streamline construction and simplify future upgrades.
While modularity offers speed and precision, it demands disciplined, early-stage planning and stakeholder alignment since any late-stage design changes can be costly. This balance of flexibility and control is essential to managing long project timelines and evolving clinical needs.
Australian health infrastructure is already embracing modular techniques. Projects like the New Coomera Hospital and Melton Hospital are using standardised design elements to support future adaptability, reduce construction time, and lower lifecycle costs. Women’s and babies’ hospitals will also need to be conceived as ‘adaptive frameworks’, anticipating expansions, technological shifts, and evolving care models.
Midland Metro University Hospital
6: More ways around
Getting around a complex healthcare environment remains one of the most significant stressors for patients, families, and visitors. International exemplars demonstrate that multimodal wayfinding strategies are central to delivering an intuitive, user-centred experience.
The New Children’s Hospital in Ireland employs constellation-inspired graphic theming, art installations, and digital navigation tools to support orientation across its expansive footprint. Oxford integrates narrative art trails and colour-coded environmental graphics, creating layers of visual cues that guide movement and enhance engagement.
Australian healthcare design is also making great advances in this domain. The Queensland Children’s Hospital uses views to landscape, axial planning, and natural light as orienting devices, while the New Coomera Hospital integrates the surrounding bushland as a contextual landmark to reinforce place identity. For women’s and babies’ hospitals, legible planning frameworks, differentiated material palettes, and interactive digital wayfinding systems will be essential to minimising cognitive load, supporting accessibility, and enhancing the overall experience of care.
Sunshine Coast University Hospital
