“Caring is a powerful business advantage.” – Scott Johnson

We live in exciting times and what better way to start the year right than to examine the trends that will continue to shape the Medical Interiors in the coming years to come. Join us for this short rundown of the trends that will factor into how the medical environment will be made better for patients and your practices themselves. Let’s begin!

1. Healing Medical Interiors for Physical and Mental Health

Our collective pandemic experience has brought to the surface an important realization that physical and mental health are aspects that deserve equal attention. It has forever changed the way we interact and inhabit spaces, leading us to make design decisions that should not only preserve the sanitation protocols expected of medical spaces but inspire wellness of the mind. Expect earth tones for colors to dominate the interiors and natural materials to figure prominently for their perceived warmth to induce comfort for patients. The global push for sustainability will also affect the preference for responsible sourcing of materials which should also figure in the design process. A truly healing space that strives to bring about a positive impact whether inside or outside the confines of the medical practice brings wellness to your patients and beyond.

2. Branding that shows off Personality

In the digital economy, it’s not just enough to have a brand anymore, a brand needs to have a personality that people can relate to, a personality that can inspire their trust. Having the personality of your medical practice down at the foundational level increases the success of your brand to grab potential patients. Truly, reflecting this personality in the overall communication – whether verbal or non-verbal makes the practice more authentic and less intimidating. Try to assign a description to your brand’s personality and see if it matches your brand. Is your brand friendly, direct, playful, or maybe formal? Connecting the brand through all its strands like the logo, the social media interactions, the tone of voice, and most especially your interior design is an exercise in streamlining your image into one cohesive, trustworthy whole.

3. Letting nature in

You can never go wrong with bringing the outside in. It is well documented that bringing in nature has a positive impact on patient recovery and outcomes and its soothing quality matches the objectives of the medical interior for wellness. We continue to see this as a trend that will continue to define medical interiors in the coming years and for good reason. Letting in more daylight for example not only affords more liberating views of a wider world beyond the walls of a room but also gives better color rendition to the environment and reduces power costs for lighting. Even small gestures like a potted plant placed near waiting patients relax the weariness of any medical visit.

4. Multifunctionality for Optimized Workspaces

As real estate prices soar, so do medical offices that strive to generate the most amount of revenue for any given space. There is an impetus for practitioners to optimize their workplaces to be able to deliver quality service and likewise, there is an added benefit for patients to reduce their movement from one process to another thereby reducing stress. Engineering each space to be compartmentalized to have multiple uses with little to no effort at all can enable consultation and procedures to be done in one space, for multiple doctors to share an office, or to take on completely different functions depending on any time of day. Doing double duty is the way of the future for imparting more value to your patients, and your practice as well.

5. Future forward with Technology

While restrictions have eased and more contact has been accepted on our back to normalcy, there are processes that the pandemic has forced us to jump into the virtual realm that has been made ultimately better. Automation of appointments and even data gathering, and access have greatly improved medical interaction while serving the pandemic limitations and we don’t see why they will not continue in the new normal. AI or Artificial intelligence and AR or Augmented Reality are waves of the future that can be integrated into the medical practice itself and it will only be a question of time before it finds itself some notable application.

Trends come and go but we believe that the points we listed above will go beyond the foreseeable future. That is the true measure of meaningful changes that matter and that are effective. It is maybe a new year, but the goal is still the same – to build truly healing spaces. Book a complimentary consultation with us and find out ways that we have improved medical practices like yours to reach their full potential.