Information for Doctors and Health Professionals

This Section Is Dedicated to the Doctors and Health Professionals Related to Health in the Built Environment

When considering the impacts that the built environment has on human health, the field of medicine is critical to provide solutions to ensure that buildings can provide proper health for the inhabitants. It also can be an important new facet for health and medical professionals when evaluating patient health.

The health and medical professionals already have a tremendous understanding of the many layers of health, yet the addition of how the built environment impacts human health may not be as common.

This addition to include the built environment in health evaluation for patients might seem overly complex at first, yet knowledge of these facets can also provide extensive information to help in the patient’s best health.

While the fields of architecture and medicine will be those doing the research, evaluations, and providing solutions as the supply of these issues, the public will be those who demand these changes. And therefore, it’s also critical to make sure that these professionals recognize their clients’ needs and utilize best practices for proper solutions.

It’s important to state that a focus on health in the built environment does not immediately denote that current buildings are unhealthy. However, with modern-day building materials and methods, it’s also critical to re-evaluate the complex processes and building systems.

It’s also important to note that building health in the past has not had extensive integrations between architecture and medical professions, which the Architectural Medicine System (AMS) is advocating.

And this means that new integrations avail new processes and working with new professionals that historically have not existed. This addition can provide deeper insights towards better health and wellness, and as such, requires an open mindset to new processes and protocols.

A key to the success of these integrative solutions is to recognize the importance of systems. To help in providing more clarity as to how these built environment issues can be evaluated, and the roles that each professional can provide in this process can be seen in the following flowchart:

This chart shows the process of each professional working together to provide evaluations, processes, and solutions. This new framework can help to define how these systems can function, and what role each professional will have to provide these solutions.

There are two key components on this chart that should be discussed first, and that is the new professions of the Architectural Doctor and the Healthy Building Inspector.

And this leads to the Healthy Building Inspection, which can help to provide analysis that both the architect/builder and the doctor/health professional can utilize in providing solutions.

It’s clear that the doctor provides a critical role in this evaluation process, by starting with the recognition that a patient’s ailment might be caused by their built environment.

This begins the initial process for a building Rx to be prescribed, which is the Healthy Building Inspection. The Healthy Building Inspector can provide the analysis, and is akin to the doctor requesting a blood test, an MRI, or any other testing process to provide information and data in evaluating the cause of the patient’s disease.

While it may be a new concept for a doctor to request and building inspection, the clinician is used to requesting testing of many sorts, and this is merely another facet for this profession to utilize.

The Architectural Medicine System (AMS) can support this process utilizing the Architectural Medicine Software Solution – ARxMD. In this manner, this software can provide a process that the doctor is used to, using the SNOMED, ICD, and LOINC coding to both request and receive the data for their analysis.

While these systems require new education and training to both evaluate and include this in their evaluations for their patient’s health, the Architectural Medicine System (AMS) can support these processes.

You can read more about this in the book Architectural Medicine – Building the Bridge to Wellness, available in print and ebook on Amazon or on our website here.

More information about the Architectural Medicine System (AMS) can be found at this link, and an overview of ARxMD – the Architectural Medicine Software Solution can be found at this link.