Digitising of Scotland’s healthcare buildings gathers pace

NHS Scotland, which has thousands of assets and properties, is seeking to transform the way it manages data across the 14 territorial health boards and eight national health boards.

The covers everything from rural GP surgeries to major city hospitals.  The Construction Innovation Hub said that, while different in set up, both share the need to manage and access high-quality data across the system to allow for quality decision-making to be achieved. This, in turn, allows them to operate and achieve targets better, using the data to test and monitor performance.

Collaboration between the Hub and NHS Scotland has resulted in an interactive toolkit designed to provide a framework for the design, construction and maintenance of NHS Scotland’s built assets. Other collaborative work includes newly published bespoke guidance on the use of ‘digital twinning’, whereby a computer model replicates the real assets to assist in management. The new guide is intended to help inform a clear digital twin strategy throughout the lifecycle of a build. 

David Philp, impact director for the Construction Innovation Hub, said: “Through engagement with NHS Scotland Assure, we have been helping create a framework and tools to establish the high-level principles, methods and the target technology architecture needed to create a digital and connected estate.

“This work underpins the NHS Scotland drive towards a Digital Estate and an information led approach through Assurance and Improvement Management Systems (AIMS), their enterprise level common data environment (CDE).”

Louise Sykes, senior digital estate and asset management advisor for NHS Scotland Assure, part of NHS National Services Scotland, said: “The collaboration with the Construction Innovation Hub has been instrumental in assisting health boards with their digital transformation journeys.

“We are now working together on further innovative developments, including a digital estate prioritisation tool. This will be rolled out and implemented as part of an ambition to digitise the Scottish Healthcare built environment at scale.”

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