Estates and Digital

Contents

• Premises rationalisation through hybrid working
• Digital wards
• Connectivity in our buildings
• Out of area estates
• Sustainability
• Our Estates and Digital joint focus areas are
• Transformation Plan headlines
• Measures for success

The MPFT Digital Strategy and the Facilities and Estates Strategy will align our capital approach and priorities. They are both fundamental to the future aspirations of our organisation and have multiple interdependencies.

The Estates Strategy will outline the ambitions to regenerate key premises in use across MPFT, for example the creation of community hubs and forensic inpatient ward environments.

Estates also intend to reduce the maintenance backlog, ensure building compliance, refurbish existing environments to modern standards and décor. All of this will be based upon feedback from our service users.

At the same time as consolidating our total premises count we will simultaneously embed digital functionality into the fabric of our premises.

Our Estates Strategy will provide in detail the planned use of our ongoing capital allocation and partnership funding models with our regional health and care colleagues across Integrated Care Systems (ICSs).

From a digital perspective, there is substantial overlap across corporate services to ensure we get our inpatient, clinic, community, staff base and multi-use environments to be compliant and effective. This aims to meet and exceed the expectations of our service users, carers and staff.

We will collaborate with Estates to ensure our buildings are digitally enabled to be resource effective, smart and eco-friendly. This is a key part of the MPFT Green Plan.

Over the course of both strategies, through ongoing adoption of new technology innovations such as Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices, we can connect, monitor and report on any component within any building across any of our premises.

“Digital technology allows us to manage the estate effectively and remotely, particularly as the Trust covers such a wide demographic. We are able to upload and share from a centralised location information about our sites that can be accessed from anywhere within the Trust.”
Abigail Hamlett, Senior Governance and Assurance Manager, Facilities & Estates Directorate

Data will be captured through connected devices, and we will develop Artificial Intelligence (AI) and predictive care for our service users; developing the capacity to research big data across connected clinical and care devices.

Our digital strategy aims to utilise the foundations of our Wide Area Network (WAN) connected premises to create a single connected view of our 130+ premises across the MPFT estate.

Premises rationalisation through hybrid working

With increased remote working and blended working practices, MPFT Digital and Estates will work in close partnership with our service users, care group leads and staff on the estate’s rationalisation strategy.

“Community workers being able to access all systems needed for their role, while out of the office, especially in regards to those in remote areas where Wi-Fi signals are very weak, this will not only help staff to give the best care possible for patients but would also contribute to a safer working environment for the staff.”
Bronwen Clowes, Team Administrator, Community District Nursing

We will ensure that our estate utilisation is accurately monitored and reported, and we are making the most of the buildings we have at our disposal.

COVID-19 working conditions have highlighted the need to review how our premises are currently configured and occupied by our workforce, including clinic areas and bookable spaces.

Working in collaboration, we will co-design our future workforce working patterns and staff bases, gaining a full understanding of where staff are based and ensuring that bookable spaces are provided in the future, a shift away from the one desk per person model of old.

Space and user utilisation of our rooms and desks will be made available through premises reporting on big data dashboards, linked into cleaning, floorplan and knowledge management solutions, ensuring our estates strategies can be informed by data-based decision making.

A key element of this will be bringing our office-based workforce together with our remote workforce into digital meetings without the need for office-based meeting attendees to have their own camera and headset.

This will be achieved through the introduction of audio visual (AV) suites within priority meeting rooms across the Trust.

For our service users, the flow within our buildings is really important.

From a digital perspective we will introduce self-service features such as:

• bookable booths for digital systems access
• admission check-in facilities via kiosks connected to our clinical and care systems
• digital signage with real-time waiting time displays
• multi-lingual, easy read, wayfinding and interactive boards

These digital enablers will make it easier for service users to know where to be, how long to be there and where to seek support at any point within our premises.

Digital wards

Our Inpatient areas for service users will be enhanced through bedside entertainment and video solutions to support virtual family visits.

Family visit rooms will be enabled with the required security and entertainment features for children of all ages.

Our recreational areas on inpatient forensic wards will be equipped with smart exercise equipment such as exercise bikes and rowing machines, to aid wellbeing and physical health.

Inpatient bedrooms deemed appropriate will also be enhanced with new digital features to support both service users and staff in the delivery of care.

For single occupancy bedrooms we will continue our deployment of smart beds for service user vital monitoring, falls risk alerting, motion and continence sensors.

We will also deploy updated infection management software solutions to ensure our service users and environments are closely monitored and reported and appropriate actions taken in the event of detected outbreaks.

As part of our ongoing innovation of our inpatient environments we will review the potential to deploy tamper-proof, AI enabled smart speakers for room controls, real time monitoring of bed occupancy, status and cleaning schedules.

Our forensic reception areas will seek to introduce biometric ID systems and safety body scanners for secure ward access and device safety scanning.

Smart lockers for staff and visitors will reduce administrative overhead on reception staff and provide ease of storage. Considering simple but effective additions like device chargers which will allow devices to be charged whilst securely stored.

Cashless shops and cafes will be introduced, with supporting processes in place to enable service users using their own internet connected devices, smartphones and wearable technology.

Immersive technology environments for Virtual Reality (VR) training and inpatient skills development, occupational therapy and entertainment will also look to be introduced.

Our entertainment systems will provide service users with the opportunity to benefit from AV entertainment and free streaming services, and to communicate over social media platforms with friends and family without affecting bandwidth available for clinical work.

Our health and safety, regulatory compliance, risk, security and estates colleagues will need to work in close collaboration with MPFT Digital. This will introduce more effective and consistent solutions across our estate for the safety of our service users, workforce, volunteers and visitors.

Our personal alarm systems need to remain updated, ideally without the need for staff to trigger alarm events manually.

We will update our mass notification processes through paging systems replacement to digitised solutions.

We will update, consolidate and introduce remotely accessible and wider ranging CCTV solutions for both premises and personal security.

Our door access control solutions need consolidating and updating in order to benefit from automated fire and evacuation processes.

Connectivity in our buildings

From our digital engagement sessions, it was clear that both service users and staff were not satisfied with the connectivity in a significant proportion of our community and inpatient estates.

A key theme was our wireless networks; however, we also need to focus on the continued use of our local data centres. We need to ensure a long-term approach is agreed and enacted to benefit from a hybrid approach to cloud systems adoption where our systems may no longer be hosted at an MPFT site.

Smart infrastructure and power resilience, network cabinet upgrades, fibre cabling and high specification network cabling are all fundamental to ensuring reliable connectivity. We need to achieve a high standard of performance and compliance across MPFT managed premises. We will look to determine if 5G and potentially 6G enabled internal mobile networks can offer value in the coming years within our premises.

Our Trust asset management approach requires updated and consolidated digital configuration management databases and real time wireless location tracking of valuable medical equipment, telehealth solutions and digital assets.

Out of area estates

Connectivity and digital enablement options within buildings that we do not manage is also of consideration.

Our Health in Justice services operate from over 20 prisons across the Country, and our options for digitally enabling these services require careful balance with local security considerations and policies.

Through provider collaboratives and partnerships, we need to keep co-designing digital solutions within these locations.

Our joint strategic ambition for MPFT’s estate is to create the best possible experience for all who are admitted,visit or work within our premises.

Our estates and digital solutions will complement each other to create outstanding environments for our service users, carers, families and workforce.

Sustainability

Our MPFT Sustainability Development Strategy and our alignment to the ‘Greener NHS’ programme is reliant upon the success of our respective estates and digital approaches to support agile and remote working and ongoing digitisation, but they are also significantly impacted by our approach to digitising our estates.

Centralised Buildings Management Systems (BMS) approaches to reduce un-necessary travel to community locations for simple boiler or ventilation settings changes, smart air quality meters, smart lighting, smart energy monitoring and control through consolidated big data utility dashboards are all in the art of the possible.

“Different ways of working do not need to be invented, they just need to be bedded in” 
Mark Large, NED, Digital Committee

Measures for success