This paper considers an approach for assessing the balance between energy use and infection control in hospital ward ventilation by combining a stochastic disease outbreak model with a cost evaluation. Results are presented for a hypothetical ward scenario that clearly show the trade-off between ventilation provision and infection depends on many factors including the disease
characteristics, the people concerned, the ventilation system design and rate and the costs of both providing ventilation and treating infections. Although limitations in the input data currently reduce the robustness of the outputs, the approach is shown to have the potential to be a useful framework for a tool that can quantitatively assess ventilation design from different perspectives for
healthcare environments. The paper also highlights some of the knowledge required from further research to enable better quantification of the behaviour of pathogens and the transmission processes for hospital infections.