However, there's a significant opportunity to modernise and improve our healthcare offering. Smart building can achieve many of the improvements needed. Whether this is using smart sensors to monitor patients or by designing buildings in a more holistic way to harness the benefits of certain designs over others in terms of mental health outcomes.
Working together with primary care and acknowledging the changing landscape of care, new hospital buildings should also be built flexibly recognising that innovation and improvements in care often progress at a speed which outstrips the lifecycle of a static building.
This is also an opportunity to invest in green technology as part of the construction and design. A building designed with better airflow, solar panels or with a biomass boiler can make significant savings which can then be passed on for improved care provision.