By Healthcare Facilities Today

Some of the newest, most patient-pleasing innovations got their start in the halls and bedsides of medical centers catering exclusively to children, according to an article on the Sun-Sentinel website.

Calming colors on the walls, dial-up dining service and MRI machines designed for comfort are recent changes inspired by children's hospitals.

Caring for the youngest of patients naturally breeds innovation, according to the article.

"There's a much healthier focus on the patient experience, and the reason is because they're kids," Nathan Larmore, a California-based technology strategist who advises the health care industry, said in the article. "It really gets to you. You envision your own children. So there's even more emphasis on making sure they get the best possible experience out of the worst possible situation."

Larmore said architects even use a different word when designing children's hospitals: whimsy.

"That gives you a little hint as to their thinking," he said in the article. "You don't hear talk of 'whimsy' when you're talking about an orthopedic facility."

Experimentation is also an inherent part of the culture at children's hospitals, according to Larmore.

Their budgets are typically more robust, perhaps because they find their cause an easier touch on the fundraising circuit, and there are far fewer children's facilities than adult hospitals, the article said.

Those factors combined, Larmore said, tend to make children's hospital executives "more tolerant of experimentation and more aggressive about pushing the envelope."

Read the article.