Does a hospital have to be a concrete building? Can we not use modern digital technologies way more than we currently do for our most important asset, our health? What if we interpret good and accessible healthcare in a broader sense and include a healthy diet and a healthy environment? From her personal experience as an internist and a leader in hospital management Dr Fenna Heyning describes how the hospital has developed from a 'guesthouse' in which patients are staying long term into a modern technical stronghold, these days often a large shiny building with glass and steel. Yet, there are still waiting rooms, patients who are feeble still have to travel long distances back and forth from their home to the hospital and digital techniques are not used to their full potential. The disappearance highlights the importance of high complex healthcare, public health, environmental sciences and food: all are strongly related. Unfortunately, since Virchow's time, we have become even more fragmented whereas it is so important to take a holistic perspective on society's issues and solutions.