“The hospital of tomorrow’’: a participative, holistic method to innovate health-care facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020–2021

Italy was one of the first European countries to report COVID-19 cases, at the end of January 2020.  In mid-February, the country reported community-based transmission, especially in the northern regions of Lombardia, Piemonte and Emilia-Romagna. The COVID-19 pandemic overstretched the structural capacity of health care facilities, and several hospitals in Emilia-Romagna undertook emergency measures to renovate, expand and reconstruct existing facilities. The Italian Ministry of Health required that emergency rooms be reorganized and restructured to separate the flow of human traffic and create permanent isolated areas for patients waiting for the results of tests for COVID-19.  Emilia-Romagna, with WHO headquarters and the WHO regional and country offices, then launched the “hospital of tomorrow’’ project to set new standards to be applied to health-care facilities after COVID-19. Below, we present the preliminary results of the initial steps, covering 3 months of project.