Feb 15, 2024 _ news

The Future Takes Shape at Margaret Mary Health in Physical Mockups and Augmented Reality

A couple dozen staff from Margaret Mary Health (MMH) recently joined designers from GBBN in a warehouse in Batesville, Indiana to discuss the design of MMH’s new hospital project.

The excitement was palpable. “It was just awesome to be a part of this big project and to have input… about what our future is going to be. Not just the hospital but the community,” says MMH Emergency Services Nurse, Angie Ryker, BSN, RN.

The group was gathered to review full-scale mockups of multiple rooms that will be built in MMH’s new hospital.

“As we progressed with Design Development, we used physical mockups to solicit additional feedback on a few rooms that were either complicated and hard to visualize from plans or that would be repeated multiple times (like Emergency Department treatment rooms and inpatient rooms),” explains GBBN Principal, Amy Mees, IIDA, EDAC, LEED AP.

“By immersing healthcare workers in the rooms that they will be working in, mockups tap into a more intuitive sense of space and scale,” Amy continues. “We also used Augmented Reality (AR) to show staff where certain types of equipment would be. The result is that we’re able to solicit better feedback to help optimize the design.”

MMH Surgical Nurse, Connie Chaffee, BSN, RN, CNOR agrees. “It was hard to visualize the booms and stuff when they were talking about them last time, but they had AR this time, so it was a lot easier to visualize it. So, it was just really exciting!”

MMH documented the process in a short video, here.

Learn more about how we use augmented reality in medical settings and beyond.

Learn more about GBBN’s healthcare work by checking out our case studies of Mercy Health Kings Mills Hospital, Cincinnati Children’s William K. Schubert M.D. Mental Health Center, or CHRISTUS St. Vincent’s New Cancer Care Facility.