Introduction

Worldwide, healthcare organisations are facing challenges and demands to improve design quality and safety of their estate, while addressing burgeoning safety legislation and austere funding arrangements due to the 2007–2010 financial crisis and economic downturn. This has created an imperative for all providers, commissioners and regulators to address how the healthcare environment may need to change. Although widely acknowledged that healthcare guidance/standards and tools are essential to enhance quality and safety in health care, no studies have been published, nor indeed been carried out, with regard to their usefulness. By their very nature, studying guidance and tools is rarely an attractive subject for practitioners and academics alike. However, notable publications include sustainable healthcare architecture aimed at covering the twin big and complex subjects of sustainability and healthcare architecture (Guenther and Vittori: Sustainable healthcare architecture, 2007); a step-by-step guide of how to implement an evidence-based design (EBD) process and those seeking to learn the methodology for EBD of healthcare facilities (Cama: Evidence-based healthcare design, 2009); and a description of evidence-based healthcare facility design that is meant to support quality care and reduce costs (McCullough: Evidence-based healthcare design, 2009). Crucially, the lack of studies and consequently dearth of publications that focus on the role of technical guidance and tools is manifested by the absence of policies and appropriate strategies, as well as a rationale, not only for aiding decision-making in healthcare organisations, but also for acknowledging that, fundamentally, technologies, policies and services are subject to shorter life cycles than the relatively inflexible built assets that support them. This Springer Brief aims to increase our understanding of the role played by technical guidance/standards and tools in design, construction and operation of healthcare facilities as well as ultimately establishing the impact of the physical environment on staff and patient outcomes. Consequently, the aim is for the development of guidance and tools that will aid the creation of architectural environments of quality and safety, which will lead to positive patients’ health outcomes and improved staff productivity.