The Prince of Wales is to take charge of design values in new NHS buildings.

The health secretary, Alan Milburn, announced on Friday that the prince is to become the NHS's "design tsar".

The prince has been dismissive of traditional NHS buildings, which he dubbed as "factories for the sick". He maintains that patients would recover more quickly in buildings designed in a more holistic way.

"Humans are neither inert nor are they machines, and their health needs require buildings that are humane in scale and benign in their architecture," said the prince.

The NHS is set to use the Prince of Wales's Foundation for Architecture and the Built Environment as an adviser to its £7.5 billion hospital building programme.

In a recent article, the prince said that "good design is far more than a mere matter of architectural aesthetics or preference".

"If nurses, doctors or the increasingly sophisticated equipment they use are unable to work efficiently because of careless building design, then it can, quite literally, become a matter of life or death," he wrote.

Department of Health sources say the move is an attempt to ensure that new hospitals are the best designed to date.