TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE AND WELL-BEING THROUGH LIGHTING
Energy efficient LED lighting systems offer high quality illumination with unprecedented dynamic spectral tunability that is increasingly shown to impact human health wellbeing and healthcare worker performance. Some LED lighting products claim to offer improved sleep, health, and comfort. Current research on the potential impact of lighting on patient health, healthcare provider wellbeing and productivity is too limited to be a viable market driver for adoption by the healthcare community.
The NSF funded Center for Lighting Enabled Systems & Applications (LESA), together with the Illumination Engineering Society (IES) sponsored a workshop to explore pathways to define and promote the adoption of lighting systems specifically for healthcare environments. The workshop brought together lighting and human health researchers, healthy-lighting design experts, senior representatives from healthcare standards organizations, and healthcare providers.
The intended outcome of the workshop is a whitepaper aimed at accelerating worldwide R&D efforts. The foundational white paper outlines:
- Opportunities for improving healthcare and facilities using advanced LED lighting systems
- Requirements for lighting system performance from both a healthcare lighting design and hospital operations perspective
- Barriers to developing evidence-based justification for adoption of advanced LED lighting systems by the healthcare community
Participants included experts in the following areas:
- Architects/Lighting Designers
- Researchers/Academicians
- Clinicians/Medical and Research Directors
- Lighting Manufacturers/Lighting Companies
- Hospital Facility Directors
- Health Insurance Organizations
- Healthcare Standards Organization (e.g. AMA, ANA, AHRQ, etc.)
