When I recently asked a panel of healthcare technology gurus what their ideal environment of care looks like, it wasn’t a “homelike” space that they described. Rather, it was very literally “home.”

I had the pleasure of moderating the panel “Design Considerations for Technological Innovation in Healthcare Delivery,” a DuPont event held in conjunction with Healthcare Design at the DuPont Corian Design Studio in New York.

On tap for the talk were Dave Ruthven, an architect and fellow with nonprofit Nxt Health (New York); Debbie Gregory, senior clinical consultant at Smith, Seckman, Reid Inc. (Nashville) and cofounder of the Nursing Institute for Healthcare Design; and John Moore, a PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, New Media Medicine(Cambridge, Mass.).

Throughout our discussion were themes of patient empowerment—taking care outside of the hospital or medical office building, and using technology to support patients in managing themselves. Think of monitoring your vitals via your smart phone, having an alarm that notifies your spouse that you missed an insulin injection, or skipping a trip to the ER when your infant has croup and instead quickly consulting a pediatrician from your iPad.

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