📋 Tender Overview
NEURO-CHILD
Grant agreement ID: 101299356
DOI
10.3030/101299356
EC signature date
9 April 2026
Start date
1 October 2026
End date
30 September 2030
Description: Stress in healthcare environments can negatively affect children’s well-being, increasing anxiety and placing long-term burdens on healthcare systems and society. Supported by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions programme, the NEURO-CHILD project will develop an evidence-based framework for designing paediatric waiting areas by combining neuroarchitecture, mixed reality, AI and environmental psychology to create restorative spaces that reduce stress and promote psychological resilience. It will conduct multidisciplinary research, organise staff exchanges, and foster collaboration between academic and industry partners. Overall, NEURO-CHILD will shed light on how innovative healthcare design can improve children’s experiences, as well as contribute to more sustainable and patient-centred healthcare systems.
Objective
The project addresses one of the most critical challenges of modern society and economy: stress, which directly affects health, behaviour, and well-being, and poses a major issue for individuals who spend much of their time in built environments. Millions of people are exposed to its negative impacts daily, creating long-term risks such as increased demand for healthcare services, reduced workforce productivity, and early retirement. These outcomes will lead to higher healthcare costs and a greater economic burden on healthcare systems. Preventing or reducing stress will therefore be strategically important for safeguarding individual well-being, ensuring effective public health policies, and achieving socio-economic sustainability. To overcome these challenges, there is an urgent need for innovative, evidence-based, and child-centred healthcare design strategies. Neuro-Child will develop a restorative healthcare model for paediatric waiting areas by integrating neuro-architectural approaches, Mixed Reality (MR), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) within a multimodal framework; this integrated approach will enhance environmental quality, reduce stress, and strengthen psychological resilience, while supporting the European Green Deal by contributing to sustainability and circular economy goals. The consortium comprises nine partners—four academic and five non-academic—from Türkiye, Romania, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Portugal. Through multidisciplinary collaboration, research and training activities, intersectoral staff exchanges, and ESR training, Neuro-Child will strengthen knowledge transfer and capacity building across academia and industry. By uniting European expertise in immersive technologies, environmental psychology, and neuroarchitecture, the project will deliver scalable, evidence-based solutions that alleviate stress and improve well-being, generate long-term impact on healthcare practice, policy, and sustainable design.
