Hui Cai is making an impression within the business on three fronts: instructing the subsequent technology of business professionals, main analysis in underserved areas, and collaborating with business companions {and professional} committees.
Within the classroom, Cai, who earned her PhD in 2011 from the Georgia Institute of Know-how, goals to bridge training, analysis, and design utilizing an evidence-based design method, which she’s developed by means of a wide range of experiences, from serving because the well being and science analysis chief at CallisonRTKL from 2012 to 2013 to instructing healthcare design lectures and studios at College of Missouri from 2013-2014. She joined the College of Kansas (KU) college in 2014 as an assistant professor. In 2019, she was appointed affiliate director of the varsity’s Institute of Well being and Wellness Design (IHWD), the place she leads the training of the Well being and Wellness Design graduate certificates program, and this summer season she was named chair of the division of structure.
As a researcher, she’s tackled underserved areas, together with behavioral well being and rural hospital design, to assist draw college students’ consideration to those subjects. In 2020, Cai developed a cross-institute interdisciplinary research-based design seminar with professor Debajyoti Pati and inside design college students from Texas Tech College, with the collaborative class participating rural hospital CEOs and different leaders on design approaches in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
To additional ignite college students’ ardour, she entails them in hands-on subject research and analysis publications, and in 2020 guided graduate college students on a post-occupancy analysis analysis on the impacts of visibility and accessibility of hand sanitizer dispensers on nurses’ hand hygiene compliance, with the work revealed within the Well being Surroundings Analysis and Design (HERD) Journal. On the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, she labored with colleagues at KU and the American Institute of Architects to launch ArchMap, a web-based database and dashboard that paperwork the design and building efforts on various care websites. Moreover, she introduced her experience to the Facility Pointers Institute (FGI) by taking part on the 2020 Well being Pointers Revision Committee’s subject group for rural well being and the Emergency Situations Committee’s Small and Rural Well being Subcommittee.
What do you like most about your job?
One half that I really like is the potential impression it will probably make on future healthcare designers and medical planners. I’m glad to have the ability to assist college students discover their ardour in healthcare design and begin to perceive the impacts the healthcare surroundings could make on sufferers, households, and healthcare professionals. It’s particularly apparent over the past yr when college students had been engaged within the design of other care websites for surge capability for COVID-19 sufferers, and so they realized the vital worth of the work of healthcare designers on everybody’s life.
What business challenges do you hope to resolve?
Well being disparity in rural communities and lack of assist for rural healthcare amenities. Extra analysis is required to assist healthcare designers to develop evidence-based designs in rural healthcare amenities to offer extra environment friendly care that matches the distinctive rural context.
What’s the subsequent main development you anticipate for healthcare design?
The mixing of telemedicine that provides security and effectivity with human-centered care that gives a high-quality in-person expertise. Future healthcare design will even have built-in flexibility and higher emergency preparedness.
Who/what evokes you?
I used to be lucky to have labored with many nice mentors, resembling Dr. Craig Zimring, Dr. Kent Spreckelmeyer, and Dr. Frank Zilm. They’re my position fashions and encourage me to be educator like them.
What did you study over the previous yr?
Resilience and flexibility. The previous yr has posed nice challenges in lots of elements, however I used to be amazed by how resilient we’re as a society. I believe the bottom line is to be versatile and adaptable, and at all times preserve a constructive angle.