The HEALTHCARE DESIGN team has made it back safely to Cleveland after a very successful HEALTHCARE DESIGN.10 conference in Las Vegas. We’re so proud of the event and thank all of you who attended for helping us to reach a record number of 3,700 attendees!

While we were busy wrapping things up and moving out of our headquarters in the MGM Grand Hotel, I failed to update you all on our closing keynote presentation by Dr. Esther Sternberg. And I certainly would be remiss not to mention it now.

Despite the afternoon time slot on the final day of the conference, Sternberg packed the ballroom and maintained a captive audience as she discussed her journey into the research she conducted on how if our surroundings are able to make us sick, then they may likewise have the power to heal.

Design, she said, is imperative to this. After all, a dowdy space could trigger a psychological reaction through which a patient may not anticipate that a trip to the hospital will actually make them feel better. “You want hospitals to be places people walk into and expect to be healed,” she said.

She read a moving passage from her book “Healing Spaces: The Science and Place of Well-Being” and showed an excerpt from her PBS special “The Science of Healing,” which was shown in full during a breakfast presentation on Nov. 15 at HCD.10.

I hope all of you who joined us in Las Vegas made it home safely. And while they say, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” you can be assured we’ll probably break that rule of thumb by reporting plenty more on the show. Stay tuned.