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The international debate on the critical factors that result in an increasingly complex approach to the design of hospital facilities aimed at meeting the inevitable objectives of social, economic and environmental sustainability mainly focuses on the topics of flexibility, humanization, the right economic investment, integration between the hospital macro-functions, managerial efficiency, technological and biomedical innovation, the relationship with the city as well as ways of achieving greater economies. For each of these themes attitudes and interpretations are encountered that do not always converge but that certainly stimulate reflection on the decision-making choices that complexify the task of the hospital designers. The UIA/PHG - International Union of Architects/Public Health Group seminars, as previously scheduled on an annual basis, associate the discussion of current topics with the comparison between contributions from operational experience in the field which can provide extremely profitable insights to guide the future decision-making actions of the various categories of operators concerned in the world of healthcare. The numerous and diverse Proceedings produced to date represent an extremely useful source of information not only to document the evolution of the principles and methods used to design the works but also to understand the level of importance attributed to the issues that most frequently drive the members of the PHG to address their resolution. The issues most frequently explored include those related to the impact produced by innovations on the tools and techniques to produce quality designs, the methods for encouraging interaction between those who make the decisions and the new methods of treatment made possible by the biomedical resources. This volume is divided into five chapters that reflect the sequence of sessions of the PHG conference held in Oslo on 22-24 March 2012. The authors, experts in healthcare planning and design at international level, discussed the dominant topics of the current scientific debate, providing critical contributions and knowledge about: Nordic Hospital Projects, Flexibility, International Hospital Projects, Innovative Technologies, and Hospital Planning Evaluations.
