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With the ageing of the population, more services will be required for the treatment and management of chronic and acute health conditions at home, especially those most prevalent with ageing. Several research experiences show that Healthcare at Home offers potential advantages over traditional healthcare options for both healthcare organizations and patients, however, there also are many challenges. The paper identifies criteria for the design of the physical environment (including the home, equipment, furniture, etc.) that support and facilitate safety, comfort, and healing, in relation: to the various patient populations (older adults with acute and chronic conditions, patients in rehabilitation, and patients of all ages with chronic illness) and their own physical and psychosocial needs; to the range of equipment/technology (for low- to high-acuity levels and chronic to acute care); to the caregiving and daily living activities (protocol, processes, and human behavior). Design criteria that support physical and psychosocial needs include the following: physical/technological bedroom layout; items of furniture and technological equipment.

Background: Increasing hospital costs and its social and cultural problems has led to the idea of providing healthcare services at home. Because of infrastructural and implementation problems, providing healthcare at home in Iran has not been initiated yet. Therefore, this study set out to elaborate the need for a comprehensive system in order to provide this service in Iran. Methods: All articles published in indexing sites with the defined keywords in English or Farsi were gathered. The indexing websites included Iran Medex, PubMed Central, Elsevier journals, WHO publications and Google scholar from 1985 to 2014 were surveyed. Other documents included the related books and regulations. Results: Despite of having dominant religious values and constitution laws related to stability of family relations and establishment of clinical services and health care at home in Iran, providing health care services faces some harsh challenges including ignoring entrepreneurship and lack of required infrastructures such as lack of required insurance regulations, the inappropriate and indifferent performance of some activists home services and absence of registration and identification system in this domain. Conclusion: Because of the increasing number of elderly people in Iran and healthcare costs becoming more and more expensive, establishing a system for providing healthcare at home is inevitable.