Healing built environment (HBE) and its impact on health outcome

Studies have shown that healing built environmental (HBE) factors (thermal, visual, acoustic, air quality etc.) affect the patients’ comfort, health and wellbeing. Environmental regulations exist to make sure individual environmental factors are within the acceptable range in healthcare buildings. However, these factors have notable combined effects on occupants’ comfort. ASHRAE Guideline 10 (published in 2011) describes the need to conduct further studies to understand such interactions and their impact on patients. Only when such interaction is fully understood, will it be possible to improve the physical environment, not only to meet all required environmental standards, but also to achieve positive impact on patients’ comfort and health outcomes. This research is as an attempt to pursue the discussion in this direction.

The relationship between space, sense and response becomes the essential argument to discuss the importance of investigating the HBE from a holistic perspective. This is achieved through the development of a conceptual holistic framework based on three design principles, namely: comfortable environment; well-functioning healing space; and relaxing atmosphere. These will be tested in healthcare settings through experiments and interviews.  

The primary objectives of this research are to:

• study the HBE characteristics of patient rooms including their macro and microclimate, environment and architectural features
• undertake a holistic analysis of the indoor environment (thermal, visual and acoustic and air quality) of the patient rooms under the current environmental regulation and standards;
• examine the patients’ perception of the HBE of the investigated rooms. Special attention will be paid to whether there is a wider (/narrower) comfort tolerance range for the participating patients in a patient room with a high (/poor) HBE quality.
• examine the impact of the combination of the main HBE factors on the patients’ health outcomes.

The study will review and expand the evidence base and the outputs of this research will be of interest to the multiple stakeholders engaged in healthcare building design.

Research Team
Professor Patricia Tzortzopoulos Fazenda
Professor Mike Kagioglou
Dr. Yufan Zhang