Faced with increasing demands for efficiency, sustainability, and digital innovation, NHS estates teams are having to rethink their strategies to remain resilient and future-ready.

Software company Esri UK recently held a webinar featuring leaders from healthcare who shared insights on estate modernisation and digital transformation.

Kay Mulcahy, associate director of national estates operations at NHS England, told delegates: ‘Financial constraints mandate activity and our aging estate obviously impacts heavily across the NHS on what we can do. 

‘Therefore, we look at space utilisation as a sort of lever… anywhere we can remove unfit for purpose estates or that we don't need any more is a really good way of focusing investment moving forward for our estates.'

Challenges

Mulcahy said that retrofitting digital technology into old buildings doesn't necessarily equate. 

‘When digitalisation is discussed in the estates arena, it's clear to see that there's no actual, real consistent modeling for our transition and transformation to smart buildings and intelligent hospitals, particularly in the legacy estate,' she said.

Mulcahy highlighted that the NHS needs to make sure that everything that it does is interoperable between old estates and new estates, and make sure that it has in place a workforce that is also interoperable. 

She said: ‘NHS Estates and Facilities Services has an aging workforce, 48% of our workforce is above 55, that's not to say that there's not some great innovation in some of those teams. 

‘However, we have less than 4% who are under 25, so we need to do something to ensure that we our workforce is digitally enabled for the future as well.' 

There is also a lot of work to do about changing the culture and getting buy-in from the users, Mulcahy added.

Strategy

Mulcahy told the event that NHS England has focused on three main areas – leadership to drive the agenda, technology, and governance.

She said: ‘We have 209 trusts in NHS England, all of which are working in a silo fashion and working on the same principles, but the way in which they're enacting them is not necessarily consistent. We don't need the same system. We need the same process that sits behind it.

‘So there's got to be a change in approach, I think, to guide to gain those wider efficiencies and the integrations of streamlining our systems and consolidating that data management, ensuring that it's compatible, and it facilitates streamless interaction and exchange. Ensuring the right data is collected and the data we collect is maximised.'

David Bailey, group head of digital estates at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, told delegates: ‘I think you need to be very honest about where you are as an organisation, and generally speaking, if your digital maturity is low, then you need to start simple. And as your maturity increases, you can expand the strategy.

‘Digital maturity assessments are a great place to start in helping you inform you about what your strategy should be. Another area to focus on, I think, is governance and having buy-in to what you're trying to achieve.'

Another key area, according to Bailey, is space. 

‘It's vital that spatial records, CAD drawings, etc, are up to date… That may sound simple, but we've got 28,000 spaces across the estate. So it's been a huge challenge, and one that we haven't fully cracked yet.'

Software

Bailey told delegates that his trust currently uses the Microsoft Power platform. 

He said: ‘We're keen to try and leverage the existing licensing that we've got to keep costs down, so we're not having to go out and necessarily buy things in. 

‘We will try and use things like Microsoft Power Apps and so on to develop very focused apps for our teams that build on their existing processes and try and improve those processes and bring them more functionality.'