Abstract
Chronic patients and staffs in healthcare facilities cannot avoid long-term stays indoors. Therefore, they need to get adequate amounts of sunlight to prevent diseases caused by vitamin D deficiency. This is a case study on the advanced daylighting systems installed to healthcare facilities for therapeutic environments as serving natural light therapy and a pleasant atmosphere. This paper shows daylighting devices that overcome the structural limits of architectural design solutions for inducing natural light. This study presents appropriate daylighting technologies to the purpose and types of healthcare facilities by analyzing therapeutic environmental factors. Natural light delivered through daylighting devices help directly patients recover. In addition, it can improve healthcare providers' performance and productivity, and reduce their errors, thereby creating therapeutic environments for patients, indirectly. Excellent color rendering of solar illumination is also a powerful tool for navigation and wayfinding in the buildings, and for aesthetic treatment in dental office. Furthermore, daylighting systems are streamlined and require the least material and space to attract sunlight up to the deeper inside. But because of expensive cost, they have not yet been widespread. Though daylighting devices are typically more expensive than artificial illuminations to install, the running cost savings can compensate for the initial installation cost. With the development of technology in the future, the market price of them is expected to be formed properly.