Friesen, Gordon Arthur, 1909-1992 : Gordon A. Friesen, hospital administrator and hospital consultant, was born on 21 Jan. 1909 in a small Mennonite community near Rosthern, Sask. In 1929 he became a bookkeeper for the Saskatoon City Hospital of which he was soon superintendent. From 1937 to 1941 Friesen was the superintendent of the Belleville (Ont.) General Hospital, which doubled its number of beds during this time. During World War II Friesen was in the medical services of the RCAF and after training was made Military Governor of Kries-Brilon, Germany, 1945-1946.
Back in Canada Friesen became the administrator of the Kitchener-Waterloo Hospital which was ready to build a new facility. Friesen contributed several concepts: a Y-shaped building with a central core, centralized distribution and services and modern devices for patient comfort. Friesen was also a member of the Regional Hospital Committee that published Guide to Hospital Organization and Planning in Ontario (1948).
From 1952 to 1954 Friesen was Senior Planner and Administrator to a 10 hospital system that the United Mine Workers were establishing in Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. Requests for his services by other hospitals led to the formation of Gordon A. Friesen Associates of Washington in 1954. Friesen continued to develop his ideas of a centralized supply centre and automated delivery which became the SPD (supply, processing and distribution) concept. Another system pioneered in 1964 was the Automatic Cart Transportation system (CARTS) which used an overhead monorail to deliver prestocked carts to all parts of a hospital. Friesen's firm designed numerous hospitals in the U.S., nine of which were named "Modern Hospital of the Month" by the journal Modern Hospital.
In 1965 a new consulting firm, Gordon A. Friesen International Inc., was set up to take Friesen's system abroad. Besides hospitals in Canada and the U.S., Friesen International built hospitals in Britain, Germany and elsewhere. Friesen himself was a health consultant to Costa Rica, 1958-1972, Taiwan, the U.S. Navy and other organizations. He gave numerous papers to health, professional and hospital associations as well as lecturing at universities. In 1976 American Medical International (AMI) took over Friesen International and Friesen gradually lost influence over the firm that he started. Friesen continued to act as an independent consultant from the London, Ont. area.
