A joint project of the Colleges of Nursing and Engineering, the HITS facility opened in the renovated Temple Hall in March 2014. The upper floors contain a series of spaces that are outfitted exactly as such spaces would be in a hospital—for example, a pediatrics room, specialized practice rooms, and examination rooms complete with working medical equipment. The “patients” are manikins that can breathe, react, emit fluids, and even talk, through software controlled by the faculty member observing and directing the progress within the space in real time via cameras and controls located in a hidden control room.
One floor of the lab has an apartment-style setup to continue research on the Unified Smart Home Automation Platform. Real people stay in the apartment setup so that researchers in engineering and nursing can study how they move, how they interact, and what their needs really are to develop strategies to allow people to live more independent lifestyles. Instant data is provided to allow software modifications and changes in the setup of the living facility.