HEALTH IS WEALTH

BY AL GERARD DE LA CRUZ

How would doctors envision a city?

Obstetrician and gynaecologist Dato’ Dr. Colin Lee fielded that question quite well with KL Wellness City (KLWC) in Malaysia.

The renowned fertility specialist banded with fellow medical professionals to develop the township, the first dedicated to healthcare and wellness in Southeast Asia. The “360-degree wellness hub,” in Lee’s words, is masterplanned to“embrace the ageing nation,” referencing Malaysia’s rapidly greying populace.

Now under construction, the first phase of KLWC is anchored on The Nobel Healthcare Park, three towers of medical, wellness, business, and retail suites connected by link bridges to the 12-storey-high International Hospital @ KL Wellness City.

The thought of integrating an entire ecosystem of healthcare services came to Lee after developing another hospital, Tropicana Medical Centre (now Thomson Hospital Kota Damansara), in 2008.

“There is a point of difference here because the people who build will be the people running the hospital and the city,” says Dato’ Sri Dr Vincent Tiew, executive director of branding, sales and marketing at the development company KL Wellness City Sdn Bhd. “We know exactly what are the weaknesses or areas that we should pay attention to in order to ensure we are operationally efficient and cost-effective.”

The dream from the get-go was to find land huge enough to fit the bill of “wellness real estate,” as defined by the Global Wellness Institute (GWI). By 2016, after years of negotiation with landowners, the developer had acquired seven individually titled parcels in Bukit Julil, an affluent suburb of Kuala Lumpur, to form the current site—a massive affair at 26.49 acres.

The developer approached architects experienced in medical and hospitality developments. As lead architect, Konzepte Asia Sdn Bhd ticked many of the developer’s boxes, and the admiration was mutual.

“When we first spoke to Colin, we got really excited because there was a sort of genuine sense and a very honest approach that he wanted to take,” says Konzepte partner Nicholas Ling, recalling his first discussions with the company in 2015. “That means it’s not just what we call ‘wellness-washing’ a project. A lot of developers do that. They put a swimming pool in their project, and they call it a ‘wellness project.’”

Ling, known for delivering projects like the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital in Brisbane, dialogued with the city council, Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL), during the master-planning process. The unprecedented nature of the project confounded the city hall at first, but its wellness framework spoke for itself. “Because of that, they gave us the density that we wanted,” says Ling, noting that the township’s central park will ultimately be handed over to the city government.

The pandemic eventuated in nine months of intense design processes done virtually. Around this time, age-old ideas of natural cross-ventilation and longstanding building wellness standards reignited public interest.

The zeitgeist suited the conceptualisation of KLWC just fine. Ling made it clear that the built structures of KLWC should not be “air-con boxes.” The artifice of indoor climate control was traded, where possible, for passive cooling ways, shading techniques, and other practices of Malaysian tropical vernacular design.

People are generally made to encounter a garden or outdoor space before entering air-conditioned clinical spaces. “You could be, say, in the ICU, and there’ll be a pocket garden just outside of you,” says Ling.

A COMPLETE ECOSYSTEM FOR HEALTHCARE PRACTITIONERS AND PATIENTS ALIKE, THE NOBEL HEALTHCARE PARK CONTAINS HUNDREDS OF MEDICAL SUITES FOR SPECIALISTS TO SET UP THEIR PRACTICE, IN ADDITION TO WELLNESS, BUSINESS, AND RETAIL SUITES

Special Care

The township development known as KL Wellness City (KLWC) is a pioneering fluke in that it is, in many ways, created by healthcare practitioners for healthcare practitioners.

The township’s appeal partly hinges on the inclusion of privately owned “medical suites” or clinics suited to a diverse range of specialists. The township also has an abundance of operating theatres and advanced, specialised equipment to help medical practitioners in their practice.

Equipped with 624 beds, scalable to a 1,000bed capacity, the tertiary hospital at KL Wellness City is open to—and needs—all kinds of specialists. In peopling the medical suites, the developer initially sought out doctors who need a hospital base or those whose business requires support for inpatient stay. The team also targeted general surgeons and other medical professionals who deal with multiple operations in a day—and thereby need equipment that they normally will not buy for themselves.

“It’s not often that existing hospitals in Malaysia, be it private or public, continuously upgrade or bring in new equipments,” says Dato’ Sri Dr Vincent Tiew, executive director of branding, sales and marketing for KLWC. “Equipment is expensive. You just don’t bring it in and buy a new one after seven years.”

All too often, these high-value assets become obsolete before they can be fully utilised and cost-effectively replaced by the hospital. These life-saving tools typically cost hospitals more than MYR30 million to MYR50 million.

At KLWC, the sheer size of its hospital enables economies of scale that facilitate equipment investments. The extensive bed capacity allows for efficient amortisation and the ability to serve a diverse populace, according to Nicholas Ling, partner at Konzepte Asia Sdn Bhd, the lead architect for the township. “It’s almost an ecosystem in that way,” he says.