HEALTHCARE
HARNESSING DIGITAL PLATFORMS TO ADVANCE COLLABORATION AND INNOVATION Developing healthcare estates requires a huge amount of collaboration between the many organisations and individuals that bring projects to life. Gavin Thompson, Partner and former CEO of UK-headquartered global engineering consultancy Buro Happold, explains how the business has adopted digital innovation to transform how organisations work together to create a clear approach to building facilities.
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don’t know about you, but it’s become second nature for me to turn to an app or website when I need to know or do something. Whether it’s shopping, booking a holiday or buying a car, almost everything can be done digitally. It’s often quicker and more convenient and this has completely changed the way we live and work – and the COVID-19 pandemic has only cemented this. In the built environment and healthcare, software is transforming how buildings work too. Improved data capture, automation and AI and smart products allow us to create buildings that more actively help deliver care and
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support staff. In the UK, NHSX has been established to drive this digitisation in public sector healthcare to rethink how people receive care and treatment. But harnessing this technology isn’t just limited to engineering and the products used in buildings. There’s also an exciting opportunity to improve how healthcare professionals and myriad consultants involved in the sector collect, share and update the critical information used to plan, design and build modern facilities. Often, organised volumes of files are used to bring together the strategies, masterplans and guidelines
that planners, architects and designers need to create new facilities for a client. If a process like this is used for a project, the information is brought together into collections of PDFs that are not easy to navigate or add to. There may also be conflicting standards, particularly in countries that draw on different international design standards, and these need to be reconciled so consultants and clinicians are clear on which to follow, and the approach healthcare providers want to take. Importantly, a ‘knowledge hub’ like this is only useful if its information is current and regularly updated. It has to
evolve and capture changing guidance and new ideas, or it won’t instil confidence that the process is offering accurate information or driving continual improvement. This is tricky to achieve efficiently with basic files and folder structures, where volumes of documents are hard to update and are disconnected from one another. The concept of a central repository for all information and development standards for a healthcare provider is, of course, a solid one, but we’ve been challenging ourselves at Buro Happold to think about how to maximise efficiencies and we’ve looked to software for the solution.
