November 4, 2025 — Since 2010, Darryl Pitcher, a high-ranking healthcare executive in Australia, has had a front-row seat to opportunities the International Federation of Healthcare Engineering (IFHE) World Congress affords its host country. Through participation in events in Argentina and the Netherlands, and as a host of the 2018 World Congress in Australia, the IFHE past president has seen that “despite differences in voltage and water quality and temperature and climate and other factors, there’s a lot of commonalities across healthcare, regardless of where care is being delivered.”
Innovative ideas and best practices are not confined by borders, according to Pitcher. By attending the 2026 IFHE World Congress in New Orleans, U.S. healthcare professionals have an unparalleled opportunity to gain “insight on a range of issues including environmental sustainability, safety, quality, emerging technologies and global trends” from peers already putting next-generation solutions in place in countries around the world.
The U.S. representative to IFHE, the Association of Medical Facility Professionals (AMFP), in partnership with EmeraldX, will host the IFHE World Congress on October 17-20, 2026. By co-locating the event with the Healthcare Design (HCD) Conference + Expo, facilities leaders, designers, engineers, and managers will gain access to a robust range of international insight.
IFHE is a non-profit, non-governmental body that brings together expertise from national healthcare engineering and facilities management organizations across more than 35 countries. Every other year, IFHE hosts the World Congress. It’s an opportunity for thousands of international experts to compare experiences, share best practices, and disseminate new technology and ideas. In his current role as IFHE general secretary, Pitcher plays a key role in helping disseminate those ideas through publications like the IFHE Digest, as well as participation in global events. Today, applies what he learns as CEO of Bethsalem Care and Greenbriars Village in South Australia.
Pitcher attended his first IFHE World Congress in Tokyo in 2010. “Issues around the seismic stability of hospitals were a feature of the conference because of Japan’s particular environmental challenges,” he recalls. Due to its location, Japan experiences approximately 1,500 minor earthquakes each year. “In Australia, we were getting ready to build a couple of very big hospitals. The area where I live in Adelaide is known for having a lot of seismic activity, so our facilities needed to be designed around seismic sustainability.” Through educational sessions and networking discussions, Pitcher came home with fresh ideas for achieving safe, code-compliant healthcare facilities.
“The connections that we create through this networking is what keeps IFHE progressing as a globally representative organization,” Pitcher adds. And it’s what will bring Pitcher, as well as current IFHE president Kevin Poggenpoel of South Africa, along with their contemporaries to New Orleans in October 2026.
To learn more about the upcoming IFHE World Congress 2026, visit AMFP.
