ABSTRACT
With rapid technological advances taking place in the AECfields, virtual prototyping is increasingly being used during the design review process of specialized building types such as healthcare facilities. The physical environment significantly impacts the overall results of the design process of a Healthcare facilities, and the biggest problem is the communication during the design phase to avoid design mistakes before the construction of the facilities. The primary stakeholders of the Healthcare fields must be involved during the design phase to improve and give feedback to correct the results, but not many actors in the healthcare fields have the experience and the knowledge to read plans, sections and blueprints of a project.
The problem of communication is dramatic, nowadays 3D models and renderings visualization helps but is not still enough because they cannot truly give the true sense of space. Nowadays thanks to the Digital Revolution and the developing technologies we are able to implement new ways to communicate, such as Virtual and Immersive prototyping, in order to minimize the communication gap between the Healthcare Stakeholders and other Stakeholders that are included during the design phase, like AEC actors(Engineers, Architects, Designers).
An example of an application of this technology can be the sterilization area, which is very complex to design due to his paths and spaces. Other examples are the finishing, such as colors and lighting, the dimensions of the spaces, wasted spaces in Healthcare facilities conduct to a huge loss of money.
In order to avoid that new ways of design approach are available, interactive virtual prototyping provides opportunities for embedding a better way to represents the project in a complete way closing the gap of communication between the different stakeholders. This provides a new way to review project concepts and enable end-users to actually experience design alternatives during design reviews, also reducing the time and costs during the design phase.