**1. The Relevance of Built Environment: The Case of Healing Spaces**

In a strategic field such as care and assistance, diagnostics, prevention, research, training, and safeguarding of public health by architectures for health (hospitals, community health centers, clinics and outpatient centers, etc.), both public and private ones, it is utmost a priority to operate a regular and continuous updating of quality's processes, efficacy, and efficiency of healthcare practices. The approach should apply to its entirety with prevention techniques, training, health education, and promotion activities, in relation to the needs for the health protection of users (both patients, visitors, and staff), with particular attention to the most sensitive and vulnerable groups in hospital settings [1–4].

In this scenario the healthcare facilities, affected by the requirement of promoting greater innovation and improving the quality of services and processes, have given rise to a considerable amount of concrete actions and interventions, such as the improvement of staff's training, exceeding and updating the level of organizational, management, and structural standards of healthcare [1,5,6]. In several ways they contribute not only to the efficiency of territorial assistance and care [2] but also to the dissemination of the value of individual and public health prevention, with a broad perspective of citizens' health status, increasing as a consequence the years of life [5,7,8].

In particular, in an Italian context, in order to correctly respond to the healthcare needs of the population, in the Health Pact for the years 2014–2016, signed by the Permanent Conference for the Relations between the State, the Regions, and the Autonomous Provinces, the state of health has been defined no longer as a source of cost, but as an economic and social investment, identifying a series of interventions to achieve and offer the best products for citizens' health and to promote the development of health and the competitiveness of the whole country [9]. This application has constituted a strategic and important opportunity to tackle some of the crucial and highly relevant issues of recent years with greater awareness, such as:


The methodologies for assessing the healthcare costs incurred by the various countries were developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in which 20% of the total health expenditure, quantified in the report "Tackling Wasteful Spending on Health", does not contribute to a real improvement in populations' health status [15]. For this reason, several authors highlight the importance to promote health through design actions in the built environment (urban health strategies, healthy indoor spaces, etc.) [16–19].

Moreover, in relation to the Italian case, with the Decree no. 50/2015—Regulation for hospital assistance, structural, technological, qualitative, and quantitative standards relating to healthcare are aimed at promoting the expansion of the areas, increasing hospitable features of the environments, safety and security, and real and adequate quality of care, which must be adopted to create the conditions to produce benefits and high quality of the entire National Health System (NHS) network [2,20].
