Smart building innovation in the North West of England

Comfortable and efficient hospitals and healthcare environments have a key role to play for patients, staff and visitors. For patients a comfortable hospital environment helps to make their stay more bearable, less stressful and supports recovery. For staff a comfortable working environment helps to promote wellbeing at work and supports clinical procedures and the wide range of healthcare related support staff to do their jobs effectively.  

The Lister Alliance and Cisco’s Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) programme are investing in several NHS Trusts and organisations to help to make our hospitals and healthcare environments more comfortable by deploying and orchestrating environmental and associated control technologies and by developing the associated new ways of working. 

One of the Trusts receiving investment is University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay, where CDA funding and The Lister Alliance partner network support is enabling targeted estates and facilities digital transformation at Westmorland General Hospital’s Outpatients department.  

The scope and aim of the digital transformation work is to replace the existing and dated lighting system with smart-lighting that is energy efficient, sustainable, cost-effective to install and maintain, and importantly is hosted on the data network instead of traditional lighting circuits.  

The advantages of smart lighting systems are that they require low energy sources to operate, in this case Power over Ethernet (PoE), using the network infrastructure, and therefore do not require separate dedicated costly power infrastructure to be fitted and operated. 

Smart lighting systems have several other benefits, some of the key advantages are their ability to incorporate and orchestrate with Internet of Things sensing devices and networks that collectively provide efficient responsive control of environments. 

Lighting is a crucial component in how an environment makes us feel and our corresponding mood, and how we respond and perform. All factors that are very important in hospital and healthcare settings for a range of reasons including patient recovery timescales, comfort, wellness and productivity. 

Smart lighting in coordination with Internet of Things sensing networks offer extensive possibilities to rethink and enhance occupant environmental comfort and control, safety and security, understand occupancy and utilisation levels in real-time and trends over time, and gain insights from the collective data to rethink the possibilities and reshape operational models to benefit patients, staff and visitors and provide value for all of us as taxpayers and users of the NHS. 

Innovations like those running at Westmorland General Hospital Outpatient’s department with the sponsorship of The Lister Alliance and CDA are supporting and facilitating the digital transformation that the NHS requires and as widely publicised and articulated in reports such as Lord Darzi’s report. 

There has probably never been more or better opportunities to rethink and re-blend physical and digital services to achieve the targets and aspirations for the nations treasured health service. Just as there has probably never been more need to do so in the NHS’s history considering the weight of economic pressures, opportunities to operate sustainably, contribute to carbon reduction and the imperative to achieve sustainability targets, tackle huge backlog maintenance costs and contribute to proof of values that will inform and promote the sharing of new standards, operating models, and shape collaborative multi-disciplinary teams and collectively forge the hospitals and healthcare of the future. 

 The Lister Alliance and CDA are helping the NHS to achieve all of these objectives through their sponsorship, co-creation and partnership in our work to build a sustainable NHS fit for now and the future. 

The Lister Alliance works with NHS Trusts, practitioners, industry and academia to reshape the future of healthcare technology, creating better outcomes for our patients.

Check back soon for updates on our work in the North West of England.