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Over 400 delegates assembled at the Harrogate International Conference Centre on 9th and 10th March to review what we know about improving the built environment for healthcare, and to explore successes, opportunities and challenges. The timetable of main speakers was broken up by four separate sessions of workshops. The ninety minute workshops dealt with issues surrounding the arts and health, design and the environment, innovation and construction.
A full report on the proceedings will be issued to delegates in due course, and made available on the NHS Estates website: www.nhsestates.gov.uk/news_update.
At the invitation of NHS Estates, Don and Malcolm, Martin Sutcliff of BDP, Ron Edmondson, Dartford Trust Board member, and Rennie Chadwick of Taylor Woodrow, provided the team for a 90 minute workshop chaired by Peter Woolliscroft of NHS Estates entitled Innovation and Healthcare Construction: How can we use innovation to deliver better results? of all the 20 workshops on offer, the Be workshop was the greatest sell out, with over 90 delegates attending. Malcolm set out the terms for the debate: what is innovation? Is it important? How can we do it? Ron Edmondson set out, from the manufacturers point of view, how not to innovate, and we set out the three key issues which emerged from the joint DTI/NHS Estates conference held in London last October:- (i) What helps and hinders innovation? (ii) What information do we need from each other? and (iii) what held do we need to do this?
The delegates were at tables according to their roles, and Don led the group working session at a cracking pace through the electronic voting and text messaging process for gathering data, which we captured according to the roles of the various participants. You can see the presentation slides and the data collected from the group working session by clicking on the links below.
To follow up this event and Be Healthys agenda, a meeting is to be arranged with Jane Riley, Director of Policy, NHS Estates, Peter Woolliscroft, Head of Construction, NHS Estates, Dr Roger Ulrich, Professor of Architecture at Texas A and M University and Director of the centre for Health Systems in Design, and currently on a six month contract with NHS Estates. He is a behavioural scientist who conducts research on the effects of healthcare facilities on medical outcomes and patients safety.
The final plenary session of the conference was unusually well attended and lively, and we are delighted to report that the spotlight fell on three key outcomes evidence based design, briefing and post occupancy evaluation. These three pillars of wisdom will certainly provide an important topic for our forthcoming meeting with NHS Estates.