The 2021 Optimising Health Environments (OHE) Forum

The NOVELL team hosted the 2021 OHE Forum a few weeks ago and we’re excited to tell you about it. You can also watch the presentations right now in the resources section of our website.

What is the OHE Forum?

Prof Julie Bernhardt, who leads the NOVELL project, ran the first OHE back in 2013 and the forums have been running every year since then (except in 2020 when we took a socially distant hiatus). Communication between different groups and industries is crucial for healthcare design and innovation, so Julie started the OHE as a way to bring architects and designers together with the people who fund, build, and work in healthcare environments. The learnings and collaborations facilitated through the OHE network were central to the beginnings of the NOVELL Redesign project.

What happened this year?

This year we ran the forum across multiple hubs using a COVID-safe in-person/virtual format, with in-person hubs at the University of South Australia in Adelaide and at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Melbourne, plus an online hub which provided an opportunity to participate for people who couldn’t travel to the in-person hubs. It was a really interesting way to run a forum and we managed to pull it off without any major technical glitches!

A wide variety of researchers and experts presented on the themes of cross-disciplinary engagement and health-facility design post-COVID, plus we heard research updates from recent projects, early career researchers, and PhD students during a ‘rapid-fire research showcase’. There were 13 presentations across a jam-packed afternoon and three group discussions. We learnt about a huge range of healthcare- and design-related topics - everything from co-design with indigenous communities, to designing schools for children with special educational needs, building a hospital during a pandemic, and the unseen ecology of healthcare environments.

How can you find out more?

We wanted to make sure that recordings of these presentations are available for people who weren’t able to attend the OHE. You can access all the recordings from the 2021 OHE Forum, as well as other resources including our value network analysis from our workshop series by signing up to our new resources page. We will also continue to add more resources as the NOVELL project continues.