Milton Keynes University Hospital to pilot smart hospital solution

Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is to pilot a smart hospital solution which aims to improve productivity and efficiency.

Haltian’s platform uses data-driven insights to better understand the way people work so services delivered to patients can be improved.

The pilot at Milton Keynes will launch within the hospital’s Cancer Centre and will enable both the trust and Haltian to access and monitor building information management (BIM) as well as sensor data. Working with this information will help the teams to design spaces that optimally utilise what is available in order to support the workforce.

The Empathic Building solution allows the hospital to create a digital twin of its building, from which information can be found quickly. Using the digital twin enables staff to access a huge amount of real-time data, such as room occupancy, location of critical equipment and even the status of paper towel dispensers in bathrooms.

With time, the data will support teams to make incremental adjustments to ensure the service being delivered is efficient and clinical safe for patients. The pilot within the Cancer Centre will allow changes to service delivery and new ways of working to be trialled and developed. If successful they can be rolled out to other areas of the hospital.

Claire Orchard, digital and information manager at Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The data that we are able to obtain from the Empathic Building solution will allow us to make more informed decisions around how our future ward spaces are designed.

“This is a really exciting time for us and we are looking forward to getting the pilot underway.”

As part of the pilot, Milton Keynes will join Haltian’s smart hospital community which connects hospitals to share their experiences and knowledge of the technology.

Head of smart hospital at Haltian, Gunnar Hansen, said: “We need to rethink how we can take care of patients better and in a more efficient way. In our smart hospital community, we connect the hospitals, so they can share experiences and learn from each other.”

In October 2020 Milton Keynes University Hospital was one of two trusts to be the first to offer Apple’s Health Records feature to patients.