title: New dimensions for future health care facilities.
abstract: The questions most insistently asked nowadays are: what "space" will health treatment have, and what should we understand by "care" or "assistance", in a future scenario characterized by a renewed dimension of the concept of health? As things stand, over 40% of the social/health expenditure borne by governments is absorbed by hospital structures. The main factors cutting into this expenditure and determining the very nature of the hospital today are directly connected to phenomena such as the growing use of techno-medicines, biotechnologies and e-health, the unstoppable increase in health service consumerism, and the effects induced by longer life expectancy. The progressive and necessary disappearance of the boundaries between the various medical/surgical specializations aimed at making treatment less fragmented, the growth of new "medical practices" connected to the introduction of gene therapies, selective chemotherapies, immunotherapy, stem cells, the most recent radiotherapy techniques, and the ever-growing weight of chronic pathologies and rehabilitation activities are all factors that make it essential to rethink not only the idea of "Hospital", but also the idea of the whole infrastructural system within which said "Hospital" is situated.
authors.affiliation: University of Florence, Italy.
authors.forename: Romano
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Del Nord
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001108:Architecture; D002648:Child; D002673:Child, Hospitalized / Q000523:psychology*; D006272:Health Facility Environment; D006749:Hospital Design and Construction; D006776:Hospitals, Pediatric; D006808:Humanism; D006801:Humans; D016272:Occupational Health; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000517:prevention & control