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Health and the built environment
The faculty is involved in a wide range of research activities in the domain of healthcare. These include the design, planning or management of healthcare facilities and projects; sustainable building design and the health and wellbeing of occupants; and, at the urban scale: public health and the built environment. A report which showcases a sample of these projects can be found on the UCL Discovery website.
Key research themes
Design, planning or management of healthcare facilities and projects
Research studies under this theme focus on social behaviour in care facilities, the design and planning of healthcare facilities, and strategic management of large complex healthcare projects. The common thread between these topics is the focus on healthcare buildings, which are investigated from different points of view and on different scales.
Projects range from designing buildings for people with dementia, with other expertise in designing operating theatres, or entire hospitals. Other projects focus on the management of healthcare facilities and real estate, including the use of BIM.
Sustainable building design and the health and wellbeing of occupants
A large proportion of research at the Bartlett investigates the effect of sustainable buildings design on health and wellbeing of occupants. These projects focus on a variety of building types but they all aim at understanding and improving the living conditions of user.
Research ranges from studying the impact of moisture in buildings on health, designing and planning low carbon buildings, studying the impact of airborne pollutants in indoor environments and the impact of designing for a warming climate on energy use, health and productivity. Additional work considers the relationship between building design and human wellbeing, including active buildings.
Public health and the built environment
Research in this area focuses on improving the quality of life of low-income and impoverished areas as well as the wellbeing of urban citizens across the globe. The common thread between these projects is the study of whole areas and communities rather than single buildings or group of buildings.
Many projects involve collaboration with experts in epidemiology, to consider how the design of cities shapes patterns of disease. Expertise in mapping, modelling cities on the one hand, and in social anthropology on the other, exemplifies the wide range of expertise in this arena across the Bartlett.
Collaborations
Design, planning and management of healthcare facilities and projects: Research
- 'Losing Myself': Dementia-supporting environments
Yeoryia Manolopoulou and Niall McLoughlin create awareness of dementia-supporting environments. This work has delivered an immersive installation built from interdisciplinary conversations with experts across a range of fields – neuroscientists, psychologists, health workers, philosophers and anthropologists – as well as people with dementia and their families.
Funding: Culture Ireland and the Arts Council
- 'i-sense': Digital sensing systems to prevent outbreaks of infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance
This Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) will build a new generation of digital sensing systems to identify and prevent outbreaks of infectious disease and antimicrobial resistance, much earlier than ever before. Early detection and accurate diagnosis is key to helping patients gain faster access to care and protecting populations from disease. Mr Steven Gray co-leads the big-data stream and Prof Andrew Hudson-Smith (CASA) leads on Digital Urban Systems.
Funding: EPSRC
- Communication Patterns in Outpatient Clinics
Prof Kerstin Sailer looked to improve intra and inter-care team communication. The research combined a Space Syntax Analysis of floor plans, direct observation of the routines of selected caregivers and a survey-based Social Network Analysis to understand communication networks within knowledge organizations.
Funding: EPSRC and industry
Learn more about 'Communication Patterns in Outpatient Clinics'
- Reconfigurable Diagnostic Hub for Moorfields Eye Hospitals
Prof Kerstin Sailer delivered an interdisciplinary collaboration with Moorfields eye hospital. Space Syntax Analysis of floor plans and direct observation are used to model the movement of patients and optometrist through existing diagnostic clinics and to make recommendations on how spatial reconfiguration could reduce contact and increase efficiency.
Funding: Bartlett School of Architecture
Learn more about Reconfigurable Diagnostic Hub for Moorfields Eye Hospitals
- HERCULES: Designing and building the optimum outpatient clinic for Moorfields Eye Hospital
This project investigates the development of an healthcare exemplar for recovery from COVID-19 by use of linear and pod examination system. This clinically-led project is supported by Prof Peter Scully, Prof Grant Mills and Dr Anne Symons who are working with an interdisciplinary team to model, design, manufacture and evaluate an innovative care pathway that is responsive to technology innovation and a new healthcare on the high-street situation.
Funding: NIHR Moorfields Biomedical Research Centre
- Challenging Space Frontiers in Hospitals
Prof Grant Mills and Dr Anne Symons collaborated with healthcare policy makers, innovative hospital service providers, advanced modern hospital designers to reenvision a new approach to modular operating theatres. This work used a comparison with space craft engineering to drive innovation in integrated design, manufacture and assembly. Part of Transforming Construction Network Plus.
Funding: ERSC
Read Challenging Space Frontiers in Hospitals report
Learn more about Challenging Space Frontiers in Hospitals
Design, planning and management of healthcare facilities and projects: Enterprise and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
- Using AR to improve hospital construction, with XYZ
Prof Grant Mills and Prof Duncan Wilson are investigating how to integrate the Atom, an AR engineering tool developed by XYZ, into public hospital projects to obtain accurate metrics of performance and productivity. This work will measure outcomes, advance computer vision and BIM integration and develop an in-house Construction Intelligence.
Funding: UKRI through an Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP
Learn more about about how we're using AR to improve hospital construction, with XYZ
- Blockchain Technologies in Hospitals
Dr Qiuchen Lu is investigating digital hospital network and creating an inter-hospital resilient network for pandemic response based on blockchain and dynamic digital twins.
Read the paper 'Creating an inter-hospital resilient network for pandemic response based on blockchain and dynamic digital twins'
Read the paper 'Framing blockchain-integrated digital twins for emergent healthcare management at local and city levels: a proof of concept'
Public health, economic development and the Global South: Enterprise and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships
- Feed it Forward: Evidence-Based Design for Healthy & Habitable Workspaces
Mr Peter Mclennan and Prof Kerstin Sailer integrate evidence on building use for healthy, habitable and productive workspaces into the early procurement and design stages of a construction or refurbishment project through a novel evidence-based design method.
Funding: Mott MacDonald and Innovate UK
- NHS NetZero
Prof Paul Ruyssevelt and the UCL Energy Institute are providing independent advice on two of the four working groups, ‘Estates & Facilities’ and ‘Travel & Transport’ for the NHS NetZero report, plus were represented on the NHS Net Zero Expert Panel.
Funding: UKRI
Health and Built Environment education at the Bartlett
The faculty has three postgraduate programmes centred on health and the built environment, each with a different focus:
The Bartlett Health Strategy Board
The Bartlett Health Strategy Board acts as a forum for people from across the faculty who are active or interested in Built Environment and Health research, education, and/or enterprise.
Principal objectives
- To communicate emerging cross-disciplinary research initiatives in and outside of UCL to colleagues across the Bartlett
- To communicate information on the faculty’s expertise and activities in health-related research, education and enterprise within the Bartlett
- To sustain and grow capacity in health-related research, and to coordinate health-related education within and outside of the faculty
Contact
Bartlett Faculty Lead for Health
Grant Mills
g.mills@ucl.ac.uk