Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) Programme Creating Healthy Environments Hospitals at Eindhoven University of Technology

This project is part of the research program "Creating Healthy Environments Hospitals" (CHEH), which aims at identifying environmental conditions, related to light, which improve the staff retention and effectiveness. One of the identified issues addressing patient safety are misread medication labels by the staff due to an inappropriate lighting condition. The first step in this project is to determine what lighting condition, under which conditions, is appropriate for visual performance related to patient safety, through user tests and data collection in hospitals. Once the appropriate lighting conditions for relevant roles and age groups have been determined, the aim of the project is to translate this in a toolbox for assessing the quality of the lighting of a hospital and recommending practical improvement solutions. The PDEng candidate will therefore be collecting relevant data of healing environments related to medication labels and light as well as translating the results in a toolbox.

The knowledge, as condensed in the form of the toolbox, should be applicable for cure and care facilities both in existing hospitals as in new hospitals. The toolbox can then be applied to make a quick-scan of the current (lighting) conditions and to certify hospitals with a sufficient environmental quality or to recommend practical solutions for improvement if necessary.

Setting:

The PDEng project "The development of a toolbox to validate and improve the patient safety in hospitals, related to lighting' will be part of the research program "Creating Healthy Environments Hospitals" (CHEH). It will be conducted at the University of Technology Eindhoven, under the Building Environment for Future Users chair in the Building Performance group in collaboration with the Building Lighting group, both of the Department of the Built Environment. The trainee will work under direct supervision of a PhD candidate in the CHEH program. The research will contribute to the activities within the TU/e Intelligent Lighting Institute (ILI) and is supported by Utrecht University of Applied Sciences and executed in collaboration with several hospitals in the Netherlands. The trainee will be supported by staff members of the groups 'Building Performance' and 'Building Lighting' which are specialized in Building Physics and Smart Lighting research. Combined, these groups cover expertise in the areas of indoor climate improvement, building simulations, daylighting, electric lighting and intelligent control.

Deadline Application: 31-12-2017

Further details:
Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) Programme Creating Healthy Environments Hospitals at Eindhoven University of Technology