Wednesday 17 May | 13:15-14:30

Format: Presentation
Stream: Building capability and leadership
Content filters: n/a

Physical environments are an essential component of healthcare systems. They impact on harm, infections, falls, errors, noise, confusion, anxiety and workforce injuries. On a broader scale, they support different elements of care provision, from hospitals to people’s homes. Better evidence and knowledge regarding the application of human factors, smart technology, and systems engineering in healthcare design is needed to help design facilities around patient and staff needs. This workshop will review the abundant evidence that hospitals need to be planned as part of the wider system in which they operate and contribute to improving efficiency and economic wellness.

After this session, participants will be able to:

• Appreciate the latest thinking based on peri-COVID best practice projects on the importance of a salutogenic approach for supporting better patient outcomes and experience, and better health systems performance


• Define the interacting elements of the system and technology that need to be designed to meet the performance requirements for patient-centred care


• Appreciate how to better evaluate data on cost effective physical and environmental design interventions, such as single patient rooms, smart technology, infection management and staff satisfaction and other key design questions


• Appreciate the changing balance between in / out of hospital care and what it means for the type of facilities we need, hospital at home and the distribution and number of hospital and community beds needed

Nigel Edwards, Nuffield Trust, England

James Barlow, Imperial College London, England

Paul Barach, Sigmund Freud University, Austria and Jefferson College of Population Health, USA