Conservative Shadow Minister for Health Mark Simmonds MP visited the concept of assisted living demonstrated at the Community Healthcare Campus at BRE’s Watford Innovation Park.
In partnership with Willmott Dixon, the Community Healthcare Campus aims to be one of the UK’s best examples of assisted living, where PCTs and GPs can respond to the challenge of an older population and utilise technology to monitor patients remotely in their homes. This will reduce unnecessary trips to healthcare clinics already stretched by demands created by the ageing population.
For the first time, the innovative Healthcare Campus brings together a range of technology all under one roof. During his two hour visit, Mr Simmonds saw how the Centre links into London Borough of Newham’s Whole System Demonstrator, the world’s largest clinical trial of assisted living. The Campus also has access to the training module, which shows how carers or clinicians can monitor signals and alarms from people’s homes and also access clinical measurements.
Other features on view include a smart reception area incorporating a self check-in screen and self diagnostics, a pharmacy of the future promoting self health awareness, passively ventilated consulting rooms and a carbon neutral minor procedures suite.
The UK’s ageing society poses a tremendous challenge to the delivery of healthcare. Between 2001 and 2031 the number of people over 64 will increase from 9.5 million to 15 million which means that the expected number who will be dependent on care rises from 2.5 million to 4 million. In the same time period the number of children below 15 will decrease from 11.2 million to 8.7 million. There will be 2 million fewer adults of working age by 2031.
Mark Simmonds MP said; “I was most impressed by the excellent facilities I saw at the Willmott Dixon Community Healthcare Campus. I believe that innovations such as these could benefit patients by enabling them to have more choice over the care they receive and the location in which they receive it. We want to see an NHS which focuses on patient outcomes, and this requires easily accessible, high-quality healthcare information such as the sort offered by these technological advancements.”
The Community Healthcare Campus will be open for visits during the next two years. It will be a learning environment for people in the health sector to get inspiration from as they upgrade their facilities for the challenges they face in patient care in the next decade.
You can visit the Community Healthcare Campus at BRE’s Innovation Park in Watford. For a personal guided tour with a member from the Primary Asset team, please email info@primaryasset.com or call the team on 01483 869510.
