Comfort and privacy: See inside an infusion room in the new AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion

Patients who need chemotherapy, immunotherapy or blood transfusions as part of their cancer care spend a lot of time seated and shuttling between appointments.

The 67 infusion rooms coming to the University of Chicago Medicine’s new AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion will offer many upgrades to make the experience easier and more comfortable.

The biggest change: All the rooms are private.

Compared to the current setup for infusion treatments, which mostly occur inside curtained bays at the Duchossois Center for Advanced Medicine — the pavilion’s infusion rooms will also be bigger.

Other features will include:

• Large recliners with massage and heat options
• 55-inch televisions
• Floor-to-ceiling windows
• Sofa seating and tables for guests
• Exterior windows for teams to observe patients without disturbance
  
  

“Going through cancer treatment isn’t easy, so we wanted patients to feel like they have a comfortable space to heal, and also a nice space for their family or caregivers,” said Gesalle Martinez, Program Director of Capital Projects at UChicago Medicine.

Spread across two floors, the infusion rooms are among many thoughtful healing spaces that will be found throughout the 575,000-square-foot pavilion, including high-tech inpatient rooms, a Holistic Oncology Center, a teaching kitchen, an outdoor garden and terraces.

Quiet, calming space to receive cancer care

The idea to offer private infusion rooms at the new cancer pavilion came directly from patient feedback, said Kim Ames, Executive Program Director at UChicago Medicine.

“They told us: ‘When I'm getting chemo, I just want to close the room. I want to have my warm blanket out of the warmer and I want to dim the lights,’” Ames said.

Still, a dedicated lounge space will offer guests a place to socialize if they like. It will also provide a waiting area for clinical trials patients who require frequent blood draws as part of their infusions, helping free up room space for others.

Nursing workstations, as well as dedicated spaces for cancer research coordinators, are located outside of the infusion rooms. Additional monitoring and care can be provided nearby in the pavilion's Oncology Rapid Assessment Clinic if a patient needs it.

A rendering of the AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion exterior.

Patient input helped guide infusion room design

Many elements of the infusion rooms were based on input from UChicago Medicine employees and cancer patients.

Some even got to test out different recliners in a “Goldilocks test” and pick their favorite, said Erika Turckes, Assistant Director of Interiors and Architectural Design at UChicago Medicine.

A full-size prototype is currently set up in the UChicago Medicine Simulation Center, where care teams can check out an infusion room before the pavilion’s April 2027 opening.

“The staff who have seen the rooms so far are excited,” Martinez said. “They feel this is going to be a major upgrade from what they currently have — and they love the feel, the comfort and the overall design of the room.”

The pavilion, on UChicago Medicine’s Hyde Park campus, will offer the latest diagnostic innovations and leading-edge therapies. As Illinois’ first freestanding facility dedicated exclusively to cancer care and research, it will provide advanced care to the South Side, an area with higher cancer rates than the rest of the city.