Advanced 4K theatre design at new Papworth Hospital

n early May this year the new Royal Papworth Hospital opened to patients on its new site on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. Here Andrew Frost, technical director of of MTS Health, which undertook the equipment procurement for the new hospital, explains how, working with staff from the Royal Papworth NHS Foundation Trust – including a project team, clinicians, the Trust’s IT Department, and clinical engineering personnel – medical system integration specialist, Jones AV, delivered and implemented a 4K audio-visual system for the new healthcare facility’s state-of-the-art operating theatres. The AV theatre ‘solution’ is said to be one of the UK healthcare sector’s most advanced to date.

The Cambridgeshire Tuberculosis Colony was an experimental Scheme set up by Dr Pendrill Varrier-Jones, the Cambridgeshire TB Officer in the village of Bourn, over 100 years ago in 1916. Encouraged by the results from his first patients – and following a donation of £5000 from a wealthy philanthropist – Varrier-Jones was able to purchase the Papworth Hall estate to develop his scheme on a larger scale. 

On 12 February 1918, 17 patients and four members of staff arrived at Papworth Hall, the first hospital building. Surgeons at Papworth Hospital went on to carry out world ‘firsts’ in the field of transplantation – including the first successful heart transplant in the UK in 1979, and the world’s first heart, lung, and liver transplant in 1986. These groundbreaking procedures helped Papworth to become known all over the world.