-By Jennifer Thiele Busch

Talk about a mess: With the situation on Wall Street bearing heavily on the nation's financial strength, it seems that our economy is currently more in need than anything of some expert healthcare. Hopefully by the time you read this, the practitioners in Washington will have figured something out, and things will have begun to turn around. Until then, it's safe to say that these are scary and stressful times.

Based on what I'm hearing from the industry, the consistent bad news out of Wall Street and Washington has not yet begun to filter down to A&D firms, which, having been through the last downturn following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, are hopefully smarter and more agile in the way they are doing business. But have no doubt that leaner times are coming. Diversifying by market and geographic sector (including international work) surely helps, as all industries and regions rarely hit the bottom at the exact same time.

And once again, the healthcare sector may prove to be a bright spot in the gathering gloom. Whether it's infrastructure issues like the number of aging facilities that can put off renovation or replacement no longer, the physical requirement for new, state-of-the-art spaces to house advanced medical technology, social issues like the increasing sophistication of healthcare consumers in their demand for high-quality facilities, or demographic influences like the impact of our aging population, the healthcare industry continues to offer considerable new business opportunities to the design community, around the United States and abroad, where the recent economic boom has raised the quality of life and expectations in every market segment from housing to healthcare to retail. (For more specific information on the continued growth of the healthcare sector, see this month's Healthcare Design Business Outlook at www.contractmagazine.com)

How boring, you say? Think again. Our annual Healthcare Environment Awards yielded two important take-aways: The first was a high-level discussion among healthcare facility design experts (our jurors) indicating that healthcare is a rich and evolving design specialty; and the second is a group of winners that prove, once again, that healthcare and good design are not mutually exclusive concepts. (See "Managing Care," page 52, for the winners, with additional information on the winners at www.contractmagazine.com.)

For those of you who still ascribe to the belief that codes and regulations will stem the creative flow when designing healthcare facilities, guess what? Others have figured out a way around this challenge, so you can too. Bigger obstacles might be the ever-rising cost of healthcare construction or the long project lead times that make future thinking an essential skill. On any of these fronts, healthcare design is characterized by thoughtful and meaningful work that is increasingly capturing the creative attention of the design community.

Also of note is our ongoing Web site series on important healthcare design topics, provided monthly by Perkins+Will, a leading healthcare design firm. From acoustics and lighting to changing demographics and the "paperless" healthcare environment (see this month's article at www.contractmagazine.com), this series of articles offers in-depth information that healthcare designers need to know to stay fully informed on trends in the industry.