Building Information Modelling and Immersive Technologies for Evidence-Based Decision-Making in Sustainable Healthcare Facility Planning and Design: A Systematic Review

Healthcare infrastructure development is increasingly expected to deliver high-quality patient outcomes while responding to growing environmental sustainability challenges. Meeting these dual objectives requires empirically informed approaches that support decision-making throughout the healthcare facility lifecycle. Building Information Modelling (BIM) and immersive technologies fulfil complementary roles in healthcare facility planning and design. BIM is frequently applied to support the integration, coordination, management and evaluation of digital building information, whereas immersive technologies enable the experiential visualisation and evaluation of healthcare environments by end-users. However, there remains limited understanding of how these technologies have been applied collectively to support the delivery of sustainable healthcare facilities. Following the PRISMA 2020 reporting guidelines for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, a literature search was conducted in Scopus, ASCE Library, and Web of Science for articles published since 2010. Through identification, screening, and eligibility assessment against the inclusion criteria, 28 papers were included for thematic analysis. The findings highlight several healthcare performance and sustainability challenges, including costly operational inefficiencies arising from spatial layout deficiencies identified only after construction, together with the limited consideration of human-centred sustainability, particularly the mitigation of psychophysiological stress experienced by vulnerable patients and healthcare staff within highly constrained clinical environments. The systematic review demonstrates that BIM and immersive technologies are increasingly utilised to support enhanced spatial visualisation, interdisciplinary collaboration, stakeholder engagement, and pre-construction evaluation across project lifecycles. Despite these advances, the literature remains fragmented, with limited integration of BIM and immersive technologies within unified digital workflows that simultaneously support environmental sustainability and healthcare performance objectives. This review synthesises the current state of knowledge and identifies key areas for future research to advance integrated BIM and immersive workflows that support the delivery of more sustainable healthcare facilities.