The SCDH at Smart City Zurich's Prototyping Festival
Live demonstration of the simulation workshop with Zurich City Hospital
At the Prototyping Festival in Zurich, the SCDH, in collaboration with Zurich City Hospital, demonstrated how future hospital processes can be put to the test even before construction begins.
Translated with DeepL.
In the A&E waiting area, a patient collapses. Two nurses and a doctor are immediately on the scene; whilst they begin chest compressions and artificial respiration, the other people waiting are led out of the room. “Ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive,” a member of the audience quietly hums to themselves – the rhythm of the song is, as is well known, the same as that of CPR. Otherwise, the room is strikingly quiet. That’s how realistic the emergency simulation at the Prototyping Festival in Zurich feels!
The scenarios, simulated with staff from Zurich City Hospital and actors from the audience, serve to identify weaknesses in the architecture and processes as early as the planning stages.
What is being demonstrated this evening in Zurich is a small excerpt from the full-day simulation workshop that the SCDH conducted in November 2025 with a view to modernising the emergency triage at the Triemli site of the City Hospital of Zurich.
"We were able to test our new triage area at the SCDH using various simulations. The day was exciting, informative and incredibly valuable for us. My key insight: no matter how good a concept looks on paper – it is only when those who will later work with it can experience and test the processes for themselves that it becomes clear whether it really works in day-to-day practice."
“By running through the live process together at the SCDH, we had a real ‘aha’ moment: additional admin offices that we’d originally planned for were suddenly no longer needed. This meant we were not only able to save costs but also avoid time-consuming changes later on. That’s exactly why prototyping was so valuable to us.”
In the simulation area at the SCDH in Nidau, doctors, nurses and other staff tested realistic emergency scenarios – ranging from high-pressure situations with multiple patients to a resuscitation in the waiting room, which was re-enacted at the Prototyping Festival. This allowed processes and spatial layouts to be tested under realistic conditions. Weaknesses could be identified at an early stage and planning errors avoided. You can read more about the project, which was funded by an innovation grant from Smart City Zurich, here.
For the SCDH, the appearance at the Prototyping Festival was a great opportunity to demonstrate the simulation workshop with Zurich City Hospital to a live audience.
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