By Healthcare Facilities Today

The Center for Health Design has launched an extensive library of more than 2,500 evidence-based designed references. The Knowledge Repository is a one-stop shop that allows users to search publications by types of publications, terms, design category, outcome category, environmental condition category, or setting. One of the cornerstones of the database is the Healthcare Environmental Terms and Outcome Measures: An Evidence-Based Design Glossary. This document provides standard definitions and metrics for evidence-based design researchers and practitioners.

The American Institute of Architects Academy of Architecture for Health, the Facility Guidelines Institute, and the American Society for Healthcare Engineering all provided funding to launch the Knowledge Repository. 

According to The Center for Health Design’s president and CEO, Debra Levin, “This has truly been a result of collaborating with the best and the brightest. We have, for over twenty years, built up a large evidence-based design reference library that links the physical design of healthcare settings with outcomes in acute care, residential care as well as ambulatory care settings.  Putting all of these pieces of information into a digital format that is easy and free to access is very important to our healthcare community at large. For researchers, it increases the visibility, usage and impact of their work.  For users, it provides a one-stop complete source of physical healthcare design research with outcomes in a variety of settings.”

The Knowledge Repository is available at http://www.healthdesign.org/search/articles