Willmott Dixon's next generation health hub
Anastasia Chrysafi, Willmott Dixon
Willmott Dixon has launched a pre-design concept for healthcare. Its next generation health hub provides a practical solution for NHS Trusts and councils in meeting the social care challenge.
It is called Cura and provides pre-designed community healthcare facilities to drive cost efficiency and encourage better collaboration of health and social care services under one roof.
Willmott Dixon's Cura lead, Anastasia Chrysafi, will be at our forum on 30 January, 'Healthy Cities' to explain how the system works.
The construction company says that Cura is a repeatable solution to the challenge of creating new, fit-for-purpose buildings that are future proof for the needs of local healthcare. It is believed to be the first such concept available for healthcare customers.
Cura adopts the latest construction methods by using a pre-cast concrete frame structure built off-site for added speed of delivery. It offers standard sized multi-use rooms in clusters, allowing NHS Trusts to bespoke their hub to suit individual clinical departmental requirements, such as therapies, dental, general practices, diagnostics and mental health. It can be adapted into a combination of sizes starting from 1,500 meters cubed to 5,000 meters cubed. Construction timescales are quick, taking approximately 40 weeks.
Anastasia stated 'Cura will give NHS Trusts, councils and their partners the benefit of quicker delivery for much needed facilities with the added bonus of cost, programme and quality certainty, which is a key issue with the budget restraints in place'.
Willmott Dixon states that as budgets are stretched, many capital building projects are beyond NHS trusts. A 2017 report it says by NHS Digital found that the money need to address the 'high-risk' building and maintenance backlog caused by the NHS's ageing estate, almost doubled from £458 million in 2014-15, to £947 million in 2016.
Anastasia has specialised in the healthcare sector for over 15 years, starting as an NHS advisor for the selection of LIFTCo partners, and the delivery of a range of primary and community care projects. She joined Wilmott Dixon in 2009 to assist the company in gaining a position on the Department of Health's ProCure 21+ Framework.