Alessandro Caruso is a UK-based architect committed to creating healing environments for the healthcare industry. Healthcare design Alessandro Caruso’s interest in healthcare design stems from a personal experience that gave him a mission: to improve the healthcare environment for patients. Many years ago, Alessandro had a serious motorcycle accident that left him confined to bed […]
New digital Healthcare magazine
Over the past 40 years, average noise levels in hospitals have increased by a full 15 decibels (dB) reaching levels of around 70 decibels. Exceeding the World Health Organization’s recommended limit of 35 dB for a healing environment! Members of staff devote about 40 percent of their work time to communicating in one way or […]
New digital magazine about healthcare acoustics
A new digital magazine about healthcare acoustics, the ECO for Sustainable Design – Healthcare edition, has recently been released. Available via Google Play (and soon App Store), this digital publication is choc-a-bloc with case studies from the healthcare sector. It can easily be shared with friends who work in healthcare professions and others interested in […]
Sound Environment improved in NICU at UZ Leuven
The sound environment was improved in one of the bays in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) in Leuven when installing acoustical islands. NICU The NICU has an innovative design focused on improving conditions for both staff and patients. The general layout is based on 3 interconnected bays. Each bay has 12 single-unit patient rooms […]
Students and staff delighted as acoustics improves at the architectural college of Madrid
In an effort to improve the comfort, the students’ cafeteria at the architectural college of Madrid, ETSAM-UPM, was acoustically treated. Dr. César Diaz and his team at ETSAM-UPM, grabbed the opportunity to make measurements before and after, to quantify the improvement. Results showed that a large reduction of the reverberation time (from 2.3s to 0.8s) and an increase […]
Impact of sound environment in healthcare settings
Watch Gunnar Öhlen, Chief Medical Officer at Karolinska University Hospital and Paul Barach, Guest professor at the University of Oslo get together to discuss the effects of a sound environment in healthcare. Gunnar tells us about overnight acoustic conditioning that was made in the trauma rooms. You can hear the difference in the video, as […]
Being critically ill and surrounded by noise – doctoral thesis
On November 21st Lotta Johansson of Gothenburg university defended her doctoral thesis at the Ph.D. disputation held at Academic. The title of the thesis is “Being critically ill and surrounded by sound and noise. Patient experiences, staff awareness and future challenges“. The aim of the thesis was to show how critically ill patients experience sound […]
Acoustics in schools a topic in Spain
A seminar focused on the benefits of good acoustics in schools was held in Madrid. It was called “Sound Education – Acoustic design in educational spaces” and was co-hosted by Ecophon and Iberacustica. The speakers were Ricardo Canto Leyton and Ignacio Ordóñez. Ricardo held two presentations, the first one explaining basic concepts of acoustics, and […]
Hospitals acoustics discussed at HOPE Congress
“Sound Environment affects the healthcare outcome” was the name of a session held at the HOPE Congress 2014 in Amsterdam. HOPE Congress The session, presented by Maria Quinn, a Concept Developer for Healthcare, Sweden, and Jikke Reinten (Concept Developer for Healthcare, Netherlands), explained how hospital noise can be reduced. Also how to work with acoustic […]
Comfort and performance rewarded – 6ENERGY+
Thermal performance and acoustic comfort was in the spotlight as 6NERGY+, an innovative net zero energy building in Toulouse (France) was rewarded with the Green Building Solution Awards 2014, organized by Construction21, the European platform for green building practitioners. Out of 67 buildings and 120 innovative solutions taking part the public elected “6NERGY+”. “6NERGY+” is a […]
