The Most Influential People in Healthcare Design: Jain Malkin

Jain Malkin, CID, AAHID, EDAC

President, Jain Malkin Inc.

Jain Malkin is a leader in the field of healthcare interior design and has always been on the cutting edge of the latest design trends. Not only designed for style but always stylish, her projects display a knowledge of evidence-based design to back up every choice she makes.

Malkin is deeply passionate about healthcare design and has worked hard over the course of her career to promote best practices in the field. She has written several books, and penned dozens of articles, spoken at conferences big and small, all while leading a successful design firm that emphasizes evidence-based design and the patient experience.

Considering her stature in the field, long history of quality design work and innovation, and reputation as a thought leader, Malkin has certainly made her mark on the healthcare design industry. She continues to be a vital and active voice in the field, taking an active role in multiple design projects year after year, each one exquisitely designed and tailored to its individual space and situation.

Todd Hutlock: You've been on our list of Most Influential People in Healthcare Design every year that we’ve presented it. To what to you attribute your longevity at the top of the industry?

Jain Malkin, CID, AAHID, EDAC: I wonder about that myself! I doubt that designers and architects under the age of 40 are aware of the significance of my early books, which are now out of print. Acquisition of information used to be a very tedious endeavor prior to the Internet. When I wrote the first book on medical and dental space planning, there was one book in print on hospital design and few journal articles on any healthcare design topics. One had to use a card catalog (remember the Dewey Decimal System you learned about in grade school?) in the library to  access resources. Since so little had been written, I spent a year sitting in hospitals observing operations from the patient's point of view―always trying to look through their eyes. My degree in psychology prepared me well for this and also made me very comfortable reading research. I came away with hundreds of photos and many pages of notes and interviews by the end of that year, which eventually found their way into articles I wrote about how things could be improved. I spent another year visiting physicians' offices, observing flow, asking lots of questions, and taking many photos. This was such a laborious process that it took years to learn about the various medical and dental specialties. I felt compelled to put this knowledge into a book to help other design professionals achieve competency by a much less circuitous path. That book has been in print for about 30 years and I am starting to write the new 4th edition right now. Despite many fine books on healthcare design, this book is still the major reference on this topic.