Interview with Micha Kämpfer
walkerproject, partner
We’ve seen the description of walkerproject’s aims and mission, but what do you see as priority work areas
for your organisation in the future?
Healthcare is moving closer to patients´ home. That megatrend goes far beyond building more decentralized
healthcare infrastructure. There will be major shifts in the continuum of care which spans from highly specialized hospital care to self management. We are only at the beginning of understanding the consequences of this trend on the way healthcare will be provided in the future. We are committed to support the change process that people and infrastructure will undergo over the next decade. As a consequence we heavily invest into the design of outpatient and home care as well as total health approaches, similar to the ones provided by Kaiser Permanente in the US.
From an internal point of view we formed our centre of competence for facility design in 2019, which will enable us to bundle our knowledge and provide more targeted support to clients.
How did walkerproject first encounter the European Health Property Network, and why did walkerproject decide to join the network?
I participated in the 2018 workshop in Gothenburg, rather out of curiosity and without too many expectations. What we experienced was a fantastic platform where people share their pains and gains beyond country and professional borders. The quality of contributions is very high and offers us access to best practices all around Europe. After a very satisfying collaboration for the 2019 workshop in Basel we decided to engage more actively within the network.
Walkerproject has participated in two EuHPN workshops – Gothenburg in 2018 and Basel in 2019. What did you value in these events? What, in your opinion, worked well and what could be improved?
EuHPN manages well to assemble people with strong messages around the right topics. The know-how in the community is impressive, we all had extremely interesting and inspiring conversations on both occasions. If I would look at improving something it would be to sharpen the value proposition to members and the community: which are the key questions and trends where EuHPN connects people and offers concrete recommendations for healthcare infrastructure?
How would you like to see EuHPN develop, and what are your thoughts about future collaborations with EuHPN members in terms of events and activities?
I observe that Healthcare organizations or “principals” are sometimes not prepared enough to manage the complexity and cadence of a multi-stakeholder building project. They really struggle to formulate their needs, engage the right people and to keep up with the pace. The voice of the customer should be given more room.
I could also imagine that a healthcare organization at the very beginning of their journey asks the EuHPN community to specifically challenge their assumptions, hypotheses and thinking. Let’s take a major project somewhere in Europe and develop a target design based on the collective intelligence of the network.
What are the ‘gives’ and the ‘gets’? What can walkerproject offer to EuHPN, and what value do you want from the network?
We can bridge the gap between hospital construction and organizational development: how can these two streams partner better? We work on 60-70 projects per year in Switzerland, Norway, UK, Germany, Austria and Sweden: all of them aim at improving quality of care for patients and/or the work environment for those caring for them. We thoroughly review trends and new developments in technology, medical innovation and patient preferences, which is then being translated into actionable and measurable results. This knowledge we want to share within the EuHPN community.
Most valuable is the quick access to projects across Europe: we learn a lot about where different countries are in their thinking and where to find the latest evidence. Since we joined EuHPN we had numerous exchanges around interesting topics.
In general terms, and from your perspective, what are the challenges for the development of Healthcare infrastructure in Europe and beyond?
The future of healthcare is decentralized, digital and seamlessly integrated across organizational and political boundaries. My personal perception is that healthcare infrastructure does not anticipate the shifts of the next 30-40 years sufficiently. A new building is always an unique chance to improve. Let’s make it count.
