Advancing airborne infection control in healthcare: Insights from ASHRAE 241

Hospitals and healthcare facilities play a critical role in healing, yet they can also enable the transmission of airborne infectious diseases.

Originally published in AIRAH’s Ecolibrium, Patrick Chambers examines airborne infection control in healthcare facilities, drawing on lessons from the COVID‑19 pandemic and evolving industry understanding of indoor air quality. It outlines how airborne transmission differs from broader ventilation and comfort considerations, and why healthcare environments require engineering strategies that directly address infection risk.

The technical paper focuses on the newly introduced ASHRAE standard, which presented equivalent clean airflow (ECAi) as a more meaningful metric for healthcare ventilation design. Through healthcare‑specific examples and computational modelling of hospital wards, the paper compares ventilation, filtration, and air cleaning approaches, highlighting the effectiveness of targeted and localized solutions in reducing airborne infection risk in healthcare settings.