Healthcare Built Environment and Telemedicine Practice for Social and Environmental Sustainability

Chongling Sun, Evangelia Chrysikou (), Eleftheria Savvopoulou, Eva Hernandez-Garcia and Ava Fatah gen. Schieck
Additional contact information
Chongling Sun: The Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London, London E15 2GW, UK
Evangelia Chrysikou: The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, Member of the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London, London WC1E 7HB, UK
Eleftheria Savvopoulou: Independent Researcher, 17124 Athens, Greece
Eva Hernandez-Garcia: The Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, University College London, London WC1E 6HB, UK
Ava Fatah gen. Schieck: The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, London WC1H 0QB, UK

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: The practice of telemedicine started at the beginning of the 20th century but has never been widely implemented, even though it is significantly sustainable compared to traveling to healthcare However, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic pushed organisations and patients to accept this technology. During the pandemic, telemedicine consultations took place in ad hoc environments without much preparation and planning. As a result, there is a knowledge gap in the field between telemedicine’s clinical care services and healthcare built environment, in terms of design. This research focused on addressing the quality of service and experience of telemedicine in primary healthcare settings and how this could be influenced by the digital infrastructure. Our aim was to understand the correlations between telemedicine and healthcare built environment and whether the latter could have a significant impact on telemedicine practice. The methodology included interviews with professionals involved in healthcare planning, architecture and ethnography, and end user research involving telemedicine sessions. The interviews highlighted that professionals involved in the design of healthcare environments demonstrated limited consideration of telemedicine environments. Yet, the ethnographic, end-user research identified areas where the telemedicine environment could affect user experience and should be taken into consideration in the design of such spaces.

Keywords: telemedicine; healthcare built environment; COVID-19; primary health care; remote consultation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2697/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2697/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2697-:d:1055256

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().