A guest blog by Debra J. Levin, EDAC, President and Chief Executive Officer for The Center For Health Design.

This was my first TEDMED and it was just a deluge of information that just kept coming and coming – and everything was more interesting than the previous.

I attend a lot of other conferences and events and I was impressed at how TEDMED brings all of these diverse pieces together to create a whole that’s much greater than the sum of its parts. I really think that forcing the speakers to distill their messages into short 15 minute presentations helped accomplish that.

The enthusiasm and interactions that happen at TEDMED don’t always happen at other events — I’m inspired and wondering how we can learn from them and infuse some of that spirit into other events that I’m involved in…

Another thing is how optimistic I felt when I left. My world is filled with very smart people, the movers and shakers who are creating the next generation of healthcare facilities. I walked away from my TEDMED experience so motivated and excited about this next generation and our future.

It was thrilling to listen to people in their early 20s who are coming up with amazing ideas – and not just thinking about them but executing them. I’m happy and excited about our future.

Another strong takeaway for me is that the future is not about the solo inventor – it’s about collaboration.  The answers to the complex problems that we’re facing in healthcare and design today  will need to be solved via collaboration. The whole concept of “crowd sourcing” is very interesting. Using multiple, often unrelated or unconnected people, ideas and technology — bringing people together from around the world to solve problems — clearly seems the way we’ll need to be working in the very near future.

Finally, since most of the delegates come from and are much immersed in the medical and technology fields it was really interesting –– frankly everyone you talk to at TEDMED is really interesting – that they didn’t really know what we – as healthcare designers do – and never really gave much thought about the role that environments and design can play in health and wellness.

So it was great to see the lightbulbs go on when I had the chance to talk with them about the role of the built environment in the future of health and wellness!

Near the end of his remarkable life, despite all of his amazing accomplishments, Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer Michelangelo (considered the archetypal “Renaissance Man”) said “I am still learning.”

That philosophy of lifelong exploration and education is central to Nurture’s mission and our commmitment to help our customers and partners develop the best possible healthcare environment solutions.

It’s evident in our recent involvement in TEDMED 2012 as well as our sponsorship support of last week’s IIDA Healthcare Education Day.

The Education Day was produced by HealthCare Design Webinars  in conjunction with the Center for Health Design and the IIDA, with CEU credits offered for both architects and interior designers.

Nurture’s Bill Coble, EDAC, who leads Nurture’s design alliances, was able to welcome approximately 300 attendees (per webinar) to a series of excellent online presentations including:

• Impacting Health Care: Green Codes & Guidelines: Janet Rhode and Michael Sheerin discussed the basics of sustainability guidelines, as well as standards and codes that will impact the design, construction, and commissioning of health care environments.
• Retail Centers for Healthcare: Jocelyn Stoupe talked about the surge in ambulatory design & construction and the trend toward community based care facilities with retail center convenience.
• Integrating the Process: Architecture – Operations – Technology: Joyce Sensmeier and Debbie Gregory  discussed how to effectively integrate technology in new design projects by incorporating key IT, clinical, biomedical and facilities representatives into the design process to appropriately prioritize technology investments.
• Infection Control vs. Sustainability in a Healthcare Environment:  Janet Kobylka and Debi Fuller  addressed the tension between sustainable initiatives and best practices in infection control and offered alternatives that are less hazardous for both people and the environment.

Attendee response to the webinars has been outstanding and Nurture will be looking for similar opportunities to bring valuable information to our partners later this year.

Watch the Nurture blog as well as follow us on Twitter and Facebook to stay abreast of upcoming educational opportunities.

Philosopher and author Julia H. Gulliver said, “Let us never be betrayed into saying we have finished our education; because that would mean we had stopped growing.”

As posted a few weeks ago, Nurture by Steelcase has formed a partership with the organization Containers 2 Clinics (C2C) that is working to open an amazing new clinic serving women and children in a rural settlement of nearly 6,000 people along the western coast of the African nation of Namibia.

The Nurture blog just talked with Allison Berry, director of operations for C2C, and she reported that the container / clinic has arrived in the Namibian port of Walvis Bay and that site preparation work is underway.

“As you might expect, even doing relatively simple things like getting the ground leveled, solid footings in place and other requirements for the clinic installation can take a while in Africa,” said Berry. “We’re on track and making sure everything is place to assure the impending launch will go smoothly.”

Berry reports that C2C plans to do a “soft” opening of the clinic in late April, followed by a more formal “grand opening” that will include visits by local dignataries and members of  the Namibian national Ministry of Health and Social Services.

Watch the Nurture blog for more information on the clinic’s progress and the grand opening in the next few months.