Hospital design for supporting people with dementia and their carers

The relationship between health and wellbeing and the design of the built environment is becoming an important area of research that is bringing together the medical/clinical community with design professionals such as architects and urban planners. Evidence based medicine already underpins good healthcare, however, evidence based design is becoming increasingly important in all areas of the built environment. Evidence based design can be defined as "process for the conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence from research and practice in making critical decisions, together with an informed client, about the design of each individual and unique project." [1].While such a design approach supports meaningful collaboration between various disciplines and ensures better outcomes for all building occupants, it also demands that design professionals engage with more rigorous practices such as systematic literature reviews. In this regard, review processes such as Cochrane can provide an invaluable framework in which to examine, rate and interrogate various studies as part of an evidence-based design approach. In this regard, this Fellowship will allow a deeper exploration of the Cochrane systematic review process in the context of evidence based architectural design and planning, and will be beneficial in a number of ways.

Award Date

15 September 2016

Award Value

€48874

Principal Investigator

Professor Tom Grey

Host Institution

Trinity College Dublin

Scheme

Cochrane Training Fellowships