Hamburg / Berlin, Germany – Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG AEX: PHIA) has developed a media enabled luminous ceiling that can simulate energizing daylight to comfort critically ill patients. The LED based ceiling has been introduced into clinical use by the Charité Campus Virchow Clinic in Berlin as part of a unique stress-reducing concept called ‘Parametric Spatial Design’. Hospital staff can enter the desired parameters and the large, sky like area creates visuals and light moods customized to the situation of individual patients, enabled by software from ART+COM. The Clinic has implemented the concept in two of its intensive care patient rooms to enhance the healing environment for patients who are severely ill.
Research shows that most people will at least once in their life be treated in an Intensive Care Unit.1 In many cases the patients’ lives are at risk as they await an operation or start to recover after surgery. In this critical phase they often find their surroundings irritating and hostile. Clinical research has shown that factors like loud noise, inappropriate lighting conditions and social isolation can increase the risk of patients in intensive care slipping into a shock-like state.2
Until now there has been very little data available about the health-related effects of hospital rooms with a controllable atmosphere. For this reason, intensive care physicians, psychologists and sleep researchers at the Charité Clinic in Berlin will continue to work together with its partners GRAFT architects and the ART+COM design studio to use the integrated spatial concept for research over the coming twelve months. The Parametric Spatial Design concept was developed by GRAFT architects, the ART+COM design agency and the Charité Clinic in Berlin in a joint venture and funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economy and Technology (AiF).
Philips has played a significant role in designing this innovative concept, thanks to its expertise in lighting design and technology.
“We find that particularly in such critical areas as the intensive care department, lighting design is becoming increasingly important in the patient environment,” explains Roger Karner, Managing Director of Philips Lighting DACH. Together with our partners we can provide healthcare establishments like the Charité Clinic with turnkey lighting solutions that are tailored precisely to the specific needs of their patients,” adds Karner.
1 Cases treated in intensive medical care; in 2010: 2,055,087, in 2011: 2,107,852. Source: The information system of the Federal Government Health Reporting Body (‘Das Informationssystem der Gesundheitsberichterstattung des Bundes’) www.gbe-bund.de
2 See ‘Intensive care unit environment’, S. 178 – 183, in: Continuing Education in Anaesthesia, Critical Care & Pain, Oxford Journals, 2009 http://ceaccp.oxfordjournals.org/content/9/6/178.extract
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