Residential units, co-working space, waste management: business opportunities for communities surrouding the hospitals

The Thai Embeded Systems Association or TESA has organized “Series 2Health Utopia” to see the needs of local communities around the hospitals. Architectures and startups were invited to share their views and experience in designing the hospital.

Dr. Prapatpong Upala of Architecture Department, King Monkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, shared his experience in designing hospital as a health center that is clean and fully equipped with modern facilities.

With the ideas to make Thailand a medical hub attracting foreigners to Thailand, hospitals should have universal designs to facilitate those in need of easy and safe access to the hospital For example, some hospitals may have spa services and fitness center as well as doctor team to accommodate Japanese elderlies. Buildings should be well connected to facilitate elderlies, patients on wheelchairs, pregnant women and children.

Designing a hospital is rather complicated. Space should be clearly identified, functional and perfectly compliment with each other. This include the areas for patients waiting for doctors, relatives who accommodate patients, doctors and nurses who are in service, as well as operation rooms and labs.

Aside from that, transportation and logistics systems should be well managed to facilitate pedestrians, private cars, public buses, and especially ambulances which must be able to get in and park easily. The parking space must be sufficient to reduce traffic congestion and should be able to accommodate all types and sizes of vehicles. Special areas for doctors, nurses and officers should also be provided.

Dr. Prapatpong said that the parking space is quite a problem for long-established state hospitals, especially famous hospitals that have medical experts for specific diseases. They would have a large number of patients coming to the hospitals and have problems finding parking areas.

Other issues affecting the communities surrounding the hospitals also include air ventilation, waste and hazardous waste management, and water treatment as community people are at the risks of getting infected from diseases from hospitals.

He viewed that using censor to measure air pollution in and around the hospitals can be a good solution, while uplifting the standard of hospitals elsewhere would help reduce the number of patients from other areas. Providing useful information online, healthcare applications, and telemedicine can also help lessen the number of patients.

To make changes or offer solutions to alleviate the problems needs to create a prototype to ensure that the outcome is as accurate as expected as to minimize the impact that might affect the hospitals. Behavioral economics should be included as an input for analysis and be a measure to inspire finding the best possible solutions. Technologies should not be put at the core of problem-solving but we should see how we can cope with the problems first.

To look at positive side, hospitals help provide commercial opportunities to surrounding communities such as temporary residential units for doctors and nurses so they don’t have to commute from a long distance, or patients’ relatives who come from other provinces, restaurant, coffee shops, retail stores, co-working space which is a rest and relaxation areas for officers or service users can work or enjoy other activities.

In designing modern urban landscape especially smart city, one should not consider using technology only but should also think of physical function as fundamental of being a smart city.

Dr. Parinya Wattananukulchai, founder and CEO of Innovation Brain Co Ltd, a newly-established recycled waste startup, saw the business opportunity in waste management which is a big problem in Thailand. He said Thailand does not have a culture of waste separation, despite of having separate bin for different types of waste. This is due to the lack of inspiration thus causing the overflow waste problem that requires high spending for officers and labors to separate waste, especially in hospitals.

From the survey around Rajavithi Hospital in Yothi Innovation District, it found out that only 5% of trashes are correctly separated, while surrounding areas have overflow waste and bad odor.

Innovation Brain a startup which does a ‘Saleng 4.0’ prototype. It has mobile vehicles to purchase waste packaging. Sellers separate and sell their trashes by simply put the coins into vending machines and they would get discount coupons to buy products. This would inspire people to bring plastic bottles for resell and increase opportunity to recycle the plastic waste.

It is estimated that a person can produce a kilogram of waste. If 85% of waste is recycled, it would be value at 700 million baht. But in reality, only 35% can be achieved, while 50% have not yet been recycled. That accounts for 595 million baht. In state hospitals which have huge amount of trashes, the prototype can serve the market very well be they application to manage mobile vehicles, trash collecting vans or trailers to help collect other trashes in the areas.

Not only state and private hospitals which have Sustainable Development Goal, Innovation Brain also has such the common goal. The company has worked with Thai Bev Plc, a leading beer producer, which produces two billion bottles of beer per year and half of which could be recycled while the rest were overly damaged. The expenses for producing new bottles are 3 billion baht.

He viewed that Yothi Innovation District will be the test base for people with creative ideas. Rajavithi Hospital has more than 100,000 visitors and commuters per day. With such a large number of people and vehicles, it has caused the environmental problems and pollution and affect economy, society and local communities as a whole. If these fundamental problems can be solved by using technologies, combined with inspirational measures and behavioral control, people in the community will be happy and can live sustainably.

Dr. Watchara Chatwiriya, the President of TESA, said developers must see the ‘problem’ first. For example, the traffic problem, developers must use technology to ‘monitor’ the uncommon things or that may cause the problems and look for technologies that can help solve the problem through measurement and output display. From management perspective, if it can be measured, the problem could be solved by half. And if Artificial Intelligence is integrated in decision-making to design feedback control, the automatic design system will help solve the challenging problems successfully.