Unique initiative supported by industry-leading experts from MJ Medical, Llewelyn Davies, Sir Robert McAlpine, Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences, TClarke and more.
Today sees the launch of Healthcare Design Leadership, a not-for-profit community interest company (CIC) established by a group of leading experts across the fields of healthcare, academia and the built environment, to empower healthcare leaders with the skills, knowledge and tools to maximise the value and impact of their participation in capital development projects.
The organisation, a first of its kind in the UK, aims to help every NHS Trust become a highly informed client at all levels by training clinical and managerial NHS personnel on how to effectively engage in the design and development process of hospitals and other healthcare buildings.
A collaboration between healthcare planners MJ Medical, specialist healthcare architects Llewelyn Davies, and Professor Ashok Handa – Professor of Vascular Surgery and Director of Teaching in Surgery at the Nuffield Department of Surgical Sciences at the University of Oxford, Healthcare Design Leadership boasts a truly multi-disciplinary faculty comprising clinicians, healthcare planners, architects, contractors and researchers. In addition to the founding partners, contributors to the training programme include sector leading representatives from a variety of organisations, including Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust, Sir Robert McAlpine, WSP and TClarke.
As the key users of healthcare buildings alongside patients and their families, it is vital for doctors, nurses, Allied Health Professionals and managers to be the principal stakeholders in the full lifecycle of planning and designing new healthcare facilities. A growing body of research has identified that, all too often, a gap in understanding and skills means the value these stakeholders’ input has on the design and development process is less than it could be. This can cause the resulting design to be sub-optimal, frustrating potential efficiency gains and compromising the improvements in clinical care realised when organisation and building are working in unison.
Through their extensive experience of healthcare capital development, the founders of Healthcare Design Leadership seek to address this challenge through the provision of a comprehensive package of knowledge transfer, delivered in a variety of ways, to NHS Trusts and personnel. By enabling healthcare leaders and practitioners to enhance their skills and engagement in the briefing, planning, design, construction and commissioning process, they hope to shape the way healthcare will be delivered in the future by developing world-class new buildings.
