How ‘Big data’ will drive future innovation

Giving the opening keynote speech at last year’s Healthcare Estates conference, Mike Hobbs, managing director of Carillion Health, drew on his 25 years’ experience to discuss how innovation can help drive the greater efficiency and productivity that the NHS is charged with delivering, in the process cutting costs at a time when the service faces the tightest economic pressures in its history. He argued that as we enter a new world of ‘Big data’, the availability of accurate, comprehensive data on which to base key decisions will be the major enabler for the design and construction of high quality healthcare facilities in the future. It will equally be key, he said, to their efficient, low-cost, and optimal utilisation to provide the higher ‘productivity’ the Government says is essential. HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, reports.

Welcoming him to the stage on the first day of IHEEM’s 2015 national conference, the Institute’s President, Chris Northey, introduced keynote speaker, Mike Hobbs, as managing director of Carillion Health, and explained that his role involves providing strategic leadership for the company’s healthcare sector activities in the UK and internationally. Mike Hobbs has been involved in the development of the company’s health sector activity and its clinical FM contracts since joining Carillion in 2003. Prior to this, he worked in a senior management roles in the NHS. He is a member of the Healthcare UK Governance Board.

The Carillion Health speaker said it was a privilege to be asked to open IHEEM’s 2015 conference, although it was ‘slightly daunting’ to present to so many healthcare professionals, all of whom would be ‘focused on what we can collectively achieve around an agenda for the NHS of delivering facilities for patient care in a context of innovation’.