A new report from The King’s Fund highlights the need to bring together the NHS’s estate and technology to maximise their impact for patients and staff.
The report, ‘Clicks and mortar: technology and the NHS estate’ explores how the ‘key enablers for delivering change’ should work in tandem to create buildings which are smarter and more integrated for future care.
Our CEO, Jonathan Murphy, said: “The NHS’s estate has a fundamental role to play in seizing the opportunities of new technology for patient care. This means both adapting buildings to deliver the technology itself with the design and connectivity required for things like point of care diagnostics in general practice and remote GP consultations, but also in using new technology to make the NHS’s buildings work harder, more sustainably and more efficiently. Nowhere is change more urgent than in primary care buildings, which act as the gateway to the wider NHS and from which so much of the change set out in the NHS Long Term Plan will be delivered. 80% of GP practices say their premises aren’t fit to meet future demand and significant investment will be needed to support them on this journey.
“This report shines a spotlight on how existing and new buildings will need to evolve to allow technology to reach its full potential for patients – working together as twin enablers of future care.”