NBBJ and Stanford University’s Dr. Kevin Schulman, MD, Partner to Rethink Hospital Design for the Age of AI
NBBJ is partnering with Dr. Kevin Schulman, MD, a Stanford physician, health economist and professor, to explore how advances in artificial intelligence and new models of care delivery will reshape the hospital of the future.
The partnership comes at a critical moment for health systems. Hospitals are planning multibillion-dollar campuses that will operate for decades, even as AI, automation and distributed care make it increasingly difficult to predict how future care will be delivered. The challenge is not simply how to integrate today’s technology, but how to make long-term real estate investments flexible enough to evolve with what comes next.
The collaboration brings together Schulman’s research at the intersection of medicine, business and technology with NBBJ’s experience designing some of the world’s leading healthcare environments.
“This has been an exciting project to consider how technology will change the practice of medicine and the physical environment supporting the practice. It’s really exciting to think about how data and workflows will change in response to the revolution in AI. Anticipating how the physical environment will shift really requires a more expansive perspective on the future of medicine. NBBJ has been a great partner as we iterate through these exciting challenges,” says Dr. Kevin Schulman, MD, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University.
Schulman is a Professor of Medicine and, by courtesy, Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. He is Faculty Director of Stanford’s Master of Science in Clinical Informatics Management and a clinical principal investigator for Stanford’s Partnership in AI-Assisted Care. His recent work examines the integration of AI into clinical workflows and new economic models for AI-enabled care.
NBBJ brings complementary expertise in healthcare design and innovation. The firm partners with 75% of the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Honor Roll and has helped leading health systems pioneer approaches to prefabrication, modular and universal planning, computational design, resilience and sustainable healthcare design. Its healthcare practice also includes clinicians and specialists who bring first-hand understanding of care delivery to the design process.
Through lectures, working sessions and design explorations, Schulman and NBBJ are addressing challenges such as information overload, patient flow, rising costs, workforce pressures and the migration of care beyond the hospital. The work starts from a shared premise: technology is a tool, not a solution. Realizing its potential requires rethinking the systems, workflows and physical environments in which care happens.
"AI is changing how care is delivered, how clinicians work, and how hospitals operate, with real implications for the buildings and campuses our clients are planning today. This partnership brings together Dr. Schulman’s medical, technological and financial expertise with NBBJ’s track record in design innovation to better understand those implications and help our clients make informed decisions about what comes next,” says Ryan Hullinger, AIA, NCARB, Partner, Board Member and Firmwide Healthcare Practice Leader, NBBJ.
The collaboration is informing a scalable, adaptable design framework for how hospitals can respond to different horizons of change—from technologies and operational improvements that can be implemented today to more transformative shifts over the next 20 years. The work explores how AI and new care models could reshape clinical workflows, patient flow and experience, where care and support services happen, and ultimately the size and configuration of the hospital campus.
NBBJ and Schulman will begin sharing early insights with healthcare clients this fall, with the program continuing more broadly through 2027.
