Creating Sustainable Hospitals: A practical handbook

Authors

Cecile Cuijpers (ed)
Department of Sustainable Design Engineering, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4770-1504
Jotte de Koning (ed)
Department of Sustainable Design Engineering, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4378-4557
Amina Pereno (ed)
Department of Architecture and Design, Politecno di Torino, Italy
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4230-0186
DOI: https://doi.org/10.59490/mg.214

Keywords:

sustainable hospitals, systemic design, circular product design, sustainability management, environmental sustainability

Synopsis

A sustainable transition in our European healthcare systems is essential for human and planetary health. However, new skills and knowledge are needed for realizing more sustainable futures.

This handbook is the result of a collaboration within the Erasmus+ DesHealth project, involving participants from different disciplines and sectors to develop training tools on Systemic Design and Sustainability Management, that can be used for making healthcare more sustainable in practice. This handbook contains sustainability knowledge, different innovative tools and design methods, together with practical tools and inspiring examples to start yourself.

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Author Biographies

Cecile Cuijpers, Department of Sustainable Design Engineering, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Cecile Cuijpers is an experienced human factors research engineer focused on designing more circular healthcare products. She holds a PhD in Medical Design Engineering and worked for almost four years as a human factors specialist in the innovation department of Philips Healthcare. She then moved to Africa for 6.5 years, where she dedicated her time to environmental sustainability projects. Since then, she has been working as a researcher at the Department Design for Sustainability at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering of TU Delft, combining her expertise in human factors, healthcare design, and the circular economy to develop more circular healthcare products. Her heart lies in contributing to healthier, more sustainable societies - caring for the planet and for each other - and working together to make that happen.

Jotte de Koning, Department of Sustainable Design Engineering, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Jotte de Koning is assistant professor of Design for Sustainability Transitions at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering. Jotte conducts research on the intersection of the fields of design for sustainability and systems thinking. She studies how design and designers can contribute to the societal challenges of our time; or, in other words, how to change complex systems through design. These systems are for example the agrofood system, the energy system or cities as complex systems. Her expertise lies in strategic design, service design, behavioural change, transition management and sustainable innovation. And, she is always on the lookout to make food part of her research topics.

Amina Pereno, Department of Architecture and Design, Politecno di Torino, Italy

Amina Pereno is Associate Professor of Systemic Design at the Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino. Her research explores how systemic design approaches can help people, organizations, and territories co-design more sustainable futures. She develops and experiments with design methods that support understanding complexity, navigating uncertainty, and enabling shared decision-making. For more than ten years, healthcare has been at the heart of her research, working with healtcare systems across Italy and the Nordics to address the complex interplay of technical, environmental, social, and organizational challenges. She has coordinated and contributed to several European research projects on circular economy, sustainability, and healthcare. She believes that addressing complex sustainability challenges requires bringing together diverse cultures, disciplines, and perspectives, and that meaningful innovation emerges through collaboration.

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Published

July 17, 2026

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Data Availability Statement

Existing data: this study brought together existing research data obtained upon request and subject to license restrictions from a number of different sources. Full details of how these data were obtained are available in the documentation available at the resource section at deshealth.polito.it

Copyright (c) 2026 Cecile Cuijpers, Jotte de Koning, Amina Pereno

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Details about this monograph

ISBN-13 (15)

978-94-6518-290-2

Publication date (01)

2026-07-17

How to Cite

Cuijpers, C., de Koning, J., & Pereno, A. (Eds.). (2026). Creating Sustainable Hospitals: A practical handbook. TU Delft OPEN Books. https://doi.org/10.59490/mg.214