Creating a ‘trustworthy’ healthcare environment

The pandemic has further highlighted our concerns about the ‘health’ of our built environments, and nowhere is this more pronounced than in hospitals and healthcare facilities. ‘Next generation’ building energy management technology can help supply the answer, explains John Dorward, senior Design partner – Healthcare, at Trend Control Systems, part of the Honeywell Building Technologies division

Health and environmental issues continue to dominate the world’s headlines. As a result, our awareness of contagion and pollution, and their effects on us, has never been higher. From travel and transport, to workplaces, hospitals, and other healthcare facilities, we are now more sensitive about standards of cleanliness and the risks of infection than ever before. In the wake of the pandemic, we have all become acclimatised to a new environmental experience that centres to an ever greater degree on safety and wellbeing.  

These issues are having a direct impact on the health sector, which has had to adapt to accommodate both the immediate and longer-term results of the global health crisis. For example, people have been going to hospital to visit family and friends less, and many doctor’s appointments have been conducted not face-to-face, but via telephone consultations. Encouraging people to go to hospital or visit their doctor if they are ill may – in some cases - require support and encouragement, as many individuals are understandably anxious about returning to hospital waiting rooms and GPs’ surgeries. Healthcare-acquired infections are also still a concern.