Experience Profile: Humber River Hospital

The redevelopment of Bridgepoint Active LRI assisted in bringing significant, innovative design ideas to life in Canada’s first, fully-digital hospital.

The Humber River Hospital opened in 2015. With an area of approximately 158,000 m2 and 656 beds, it is one of the largest acute care facilities in Canada. With the increasingly complex care needs of patients, and technology advancing at increasing rates, approaches in the design of hospitals must continually evolve. The Humber River Hospital is Canada’s first digital hospital, incorporating new technology which includes: surgical and laboratory robotics, automated guided vehicles that deliver medical supplies, and complex pneumatic waste management systems. 

Additionally, design trends for hospital facilities continue to incorporate complex atria and open-gathering areas, to create spaces that are inviting, and which promote healing. These features add to the initial complexity of developing safe facilities for patients with varying degrees of mobility— ranging from fully ambulatory to completely immobile. 

Through extensive collaboration with the design team, LRI developed an approach to application of the Building Code, which achieved the intended level of safety of the prescriptive Code requirements, while respecting the operational requirements of the facility’s stakeholder groups.