DIGITAL HEALTHCARE FACILITIES


Rendered CGI images of the ‘Our Hospital Project’ in Jersey in the Channel Islands.


entails migrating to an offsite-hosted data repository for electronic patient records. In the UK, fewer than a handful of hospitals are currently at level 7, with Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London, Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust in Liverpool, and the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust’s Chase Farm Hospital in North London, among the very first, and these are also helping to educate and motivate more widespread understanding of digital hospitals.


Reimagining how we approach design With digital strategies and infrastructure at the heart of the hospital of the future, what are the implications for architects and designers? While digital technology is an enabler for change, the first step is changing attitudes. As an industry we are still building hospitals based on decades-old planning approaches and long-entrenched norms. There is bound to be a period of transition in the industry to encourage clients to buy into the vision, and make bold new choices, such as cutting down on consulting rooms. At the Our Hospital Project in Jersey, for instance, we integrated 10 digital booths for the consultants to meet with patients ‘virtually’, and the hospital has consequently been able to reduce the number of physical consultancy examination rooms by 20%. Similarly, hospitals can introduce sensors that measure how much of the time a room is occupied, which can help optimise scheduling efficiencies, to potentially reduce the number of examination rooms based on that intelligence.


Understanding ‘the power of digital’ As architects, the biggest issue for us is ensuring that the functional brief of the hospital has been written together with a consultant who understands the power of digital. For the SNF project,


we are collaborating closely with strategic healthcare planners, Lexica, and international IT consultant, HCI Group, on the digital transformation roadmap, so that eventually the hospitals can become paperless administrations with all clinical services digitised. When the Government pledged to


deliver 48 new hospitals across England by 2030 as part of the ambitious New Hospital Programme (NHP), the Department of Health and Social Care stressed that healthcare infrastructure must go beyond ‘bricks and mortar’ to incorporate digital technologies and data ‘to provide better care to the public’. The funding roadblocks and delays that have stalled the programme have highlighted that the only way to deliver high-quality hospitals is to transform our approach to design to make hospitals smaller, smarter, more efficient, and ultimately cheaper to operate. There is also tremendous scope to


enhance the patient experience. We need to consider factors such as that fact that while younger generations are happy to scan a QR code via their smartphone, for example with their appointment details and directions, older people may prefer to interact with a real person. By designing new hospitals for the next generation, we must strike a balance between our hospitals being ‘smart’, and still providing a level of human contact, which cannot be replaced.


Automating time-consuming manual processes


Ensuring the right digital infrastructure can help to break down data silos, and open the door to automating burdensome and time-consuming manual administrative processes, so that staff can focus their efforts on what they do best – patient care. Such measures can also maximise available human resources at a time of staff shortages in healthcare. We need


to look ‘outside the box’, and learn from evidence-based design from other countries – the SNF Health Initiative is a fantastic formula, and a ‘Template for Future Hospitals’ that we can replicate to deliver the vast programme of hospitals in the UK or elsewhere. The old way is no longer viable, sustainable, or affordable, but we now have an opportunity to effect exciting change for generations to come.


Moritz Spellenberg


Moritz Spellenberg is an architect with almost 20 years’ experience in the design and construction of complex healthcare projects. Having graduated from the University Stuttgart, he has developed a keen interest in both the humanistic and technical aspects of hospital architecture. Since 2018 he has led the healthcare expert team for the $750 m+ SNF Healthcare Initiative in Greece, which is scheduled to complete in 2025 with the delivery of three new hospitals, designed to the highest sustainability standards and level of innovation.


April 2023 Health Estate Journal 45


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