Healthcare Design - October 2018 - 20

Alise Robles
Assoc. AIA, arch II | SmithGroup,
Los Angeles

S

INCE JOINING SmithGroup three years ago, Robles

has set her sights on redefining how technology and physical space can merge to create nextgeneration healthcare environments. She's expanded her knowledge in healthcare architecture,
working on a variety of projects from schematic
design to construction documentation to construction administration. She's also served as a
key team member on multiple clinics for Cedars-Sinai Medical Delivery Network. In 2016, leadership selected her to
participate in the firm's internal design lab project, The Idea
Lab, focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and healthcare.
Through the program, she developed "PODS (Personal, OnDemand Service)" for a retail healthcare environment in the
year 2025. Her contribution to the program led to an
invitation to present at the 2017 Patient Centered
Design Conference and Innovation Summit to
discuss the impact of AI on present and future healthcare environments, where she
won first place in the Experiential Design Competition for her presentation
on findings from the Idea Lab. Through
her continued research in technology
and healthcare, she's exploring how patients will access care in the future and how
AI will be an integral part of their experience.

H E A L T H C A R E D E S I G N : W H AT D R E W
YOU TO A CAREER IN HEALTHCARE
DESIGN?

Robles: During my adolescence, I saw my father
become my mother's primary caretaker while
she was a cancer patient at the Cleveland Clinic
Florida-Weston. From this experience, my empathy for patients with chronic illnesses gave
me a profound appreciation for the role of exceptional design to improve patient care, and I
wanted to translate that into something tangible.
W H AT D O Y O U T H I N K I S T H E
N U M B E R O N E I S S U E FA C I N G
H E A L T H C A R E D E S I G N E R S T O D AY ?

Disruptors from industries traditionally considered to be unrelated to healthcare. The
healthcare industry isn't composed only of
physicians and providers anymore, as Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan, and tech
companies begin to assert themselves in the industry. The inevitable implications for patients
have yet to be determined. The challenge as designers will be to anticipate a changing future.
S H A R E A N I D E A Y O U H AV E F O R
A D D R E S S I N G T H AT P R O B L E M .

As designers, we need to redefine how technology and physical space can merge to create
a new healthcare environment that includes
benefits from the multiplicity of industries and
technologies that are weaving into the fabric of
healthcare design. Whether it's a new approach
to retail health designed to adapt to individual
or market needs or a comforting, casual wellness center for the healthcare "avoider," the exploration of how patients will access future care
can be best determined by how varying players
come together to create patient-first entities.
W H AT ' S Y O U R F AV O R I T E D E S I G N
T E C H N O L O G Y T O U S E AT W O R K ?

Pen and paper.

W H A T ' S Y O U R F AV O R I T E P L A C E T O

A little bit of anywhere and everywhere. I find
inspiration in life's daily rituals and everyday
tasks-it's the simplest pieces that inspire me
to think bigger.

Cedar-Sinai's The Angeles Clinic & Research Institute, Los Angeles

20

OCTOBER 2018

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Healthcare Design - October 2018

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