Humber River: First Fully-Digital Hospital in North America

Long praised for its commitment to patient care, Humber River Hospital embarked on an important transition — one that would take it from a hospital constrained by the limitations of aging technology and building infrastructure to North America’s first fully-digital hospital. The new Humber River Hospital opened in October 2015, and uses the most current technologies to enhance all aspects of quality patient care delivery, improving efficiency, accuracy, reliability and safety.

Serving more than 850,000 people in northwest Toronto, the new 1.8 million square-foot hospital is now the largest acute care center in the Greater Toronto Area.

Key features of Humber River Hospital include:

• The capability to switch air handling system to "pandemic mode" to create scalable, negative pressure, isolation units within the hospital.
• Co-located inpatient and outpatient mental health programs provide an accessible, integrated and effective continuum of services within the context of patient- and family-centered care and operational efficiency for adult, and child and adolescent patients.
• “Aspen Grove” glass murals on north and south facades recall a colorful woodland scene, representing the harmonization of the hospital with the local, diverse community served by Humber River Hospital. A grove of aspen trees, though different in color, shape and size, come from a single root system.
• The hospital’s south terraced plaza supports community gathering and features outdoor seating and curved, amphitheater-like retaining walls.
• A Portals of Care concept assigns each clinic a distinct space and entrance. The clinics act as individual neighborhoods, preventing patients and visitors from walking through endless corridors to reach a destination.
• Clinical adjacencies strategically consolidate services, optimize clinical functionality and improve flow. Patient arrivals are interactive with maps and wayfinding that represent 17 cultures and use images instead of words.
• Support spaces are organized at the core of each unit to reduce staff travel distances by 18.3%
• Green roofs help manage storm water, reduce the heat island effect, improve air quality and beautify the views from inpatient rooms.
• Digital design permeates every aspect of the new hospital — smart bed technology, robotics for certain surgical procedures, automated laboratory processing, automated guided medical supply delivery vehicles and bedside computer screens that allow patients to control their environments.

Quality Command Centre Coordinates Care

As a leader in healthcare innovation, the hospital opened the Quality Command Centre in late 2017 with technology developed by GE Healthcare. From this location in the hospital, staff are able to monitor and operate the entire hospital with the help of artificial intelligence. One year after opening the Command Centre, the hospital reported significant improvements in operations and efficiency. 

Video: Humber River Hospital Command Centre

We provided full architectural and healthcare consulting services as part of the Plenary Healthcare Partnerships team which included Plenary Health and HCP Social Infrastructure (developer), PCL Constructors (construction), HDR (architecture), Johnson Controls (facilities management) and RBC Capital Markets (financial advisor).