Alder Hey Innovation Hub’s pioneering work

Autumn 2015 saw the new Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool open its doors. Believed to be Europe’s first children’s hospital built within a parkland setting, the new ‘Alder Hey in the Park’  is particularly striking externally, with three distinctive ‘fingers’ housing the wards bordered by extensive greenery, and the buildings topped by green undulating roofs. Giving the keynote speech on the first day of last October’s Healthcare Estates 2016 conference, David Powell, project director for the hospital, and executive lead for its innovation programme, explained how the innovation that made such an impact in creating the new facility has continued since it opened, with a wealth of activities designed both to improve the experience of young patients and foster medical advances being championed and taken forward by a new ‘Innovation Hub’.  
Innovations 

Designed by architects, landscape architects, and interior designers, BDP, and built by Laing O’Rourke (HEJ – September 2015), the new 270-bedded Alder Hey Children’s Hospital was itself innovatively conceived, with extensive input into the design from the young people who would use it. Indeed one of the original drawings from Eleanor Brogan, then aged just 15, impressed both Laing O’Rourke and BDP, and inspired the final design. The hospital – which picked up the New Build Project of the Year Award at last October’s 2016 IHEEM Awards Dinner in Manchester – has won widespread acclaim since it began admitting patients in late 2015. Industry observers and awards judges have complimented both its ground-breaking external design, and the way that a feeling of the outdoors is brought inside.

Located in Springfield Park on Liverpool’s northern fringes, the ‘new’ Alder Hey was completed just over a century after the completion of the 1914built children’s hospital it has replaced. All the inpatient bedrooms, and indeed many other internal spaces, enjoy views of green space or parkland. A full report on the hospital’s design and construction appeared in the September 2015 issue of Health Estate Journal, but – as a brief reminder of some of the key features – seventy-five per cent of the bedrooms are single en suite, with fixed sofa-beds in single bedrooms for parents, and pulldown beds in four-bed bays. Access to play areas, natural light, and striking views of the surrounding parkland, are available wherever possible. Young people and teenagers have dedicated play and relaxation areas, while a strong emphasis on ‘next generation technology’ is, for instance, seeing extensive use made of a new electronic patient record system (from US supplier, Meditech), and dispensing of medicines by a robotic pharmacy.