Cambridge Children's Hospital at Future Cities Forum

Above: CGI of the new Cambridge Children's Hospital (courtesy Cambridge Children's Hospital / White Arkitekter AB)

Future Cities Forum is delighted that Malcolm McFrederick, Programme Director of the new Cambridge Children's Hospital, will contribute to our 'Future hospitals and R&D campuses' discussion event at St Bartholomew's Hospital's historic North Wing in the City of London.

The Cambridge Children's Hospital is a partnership between the University of Cambridge, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust. Malcolm's role is to deliver the vision of the Cambridge Children's Hospital - 'A Whole new Way'.  

Malcolm will be using his long experience at board level in acute and mental health trusts to ensure Cambridge Children's Hospital redefines how we care for children and young people.  It will unite mental and physical healthcare with world-leading life sciences research in a Whole New Way, treating mind and body as one.

The key pillars of a 'whole new way' - according to the Cambridge Children's Hospital - are:

• The Whole Child. We will treat the whole child, mind and body, as one. Cambridge Children’s Hospital is breaking down the divide between mental and physical health, delivering joined-up care under one roof on the same wards.

• The Whole Community. We will bring specialist care closer to home. Children and families across the East of England will have better, more equitable access to the care they need — with less time away from school, home and community

  
  

• The Whole Future. We will harness the strength of Cambridge’s research ecosystem. By bringing together researchers and clinicians across Cambridge, we will develop new approaches, driven by life sciences research and genomic medicine, to treat illness earlier and more precisely.

• The Whole Picture: We will build a new model of children’s healthcare and a healthier future for our young people. This is more than a hospital — by collaborating with partners on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus and leading advances in data, digital healthcare and AI we will become a national and international exemplar of how care, science and innovation can come together to promote prevention, improve health outcomes and power growth.'

Malcolm says:

'What's exciting about Cambridge Children's Hospital is it's the first project of its type in the country where we're looking at the whole child, the whole family, and pulling together everybody's needs, whether it be physical health or mental health. This is genuinely really exciting for me.

'I've had experience of being in hospital, both myself and as a father. I think one of the things that is really important to me, from my experience, is the fact that everyone at Cambridge Children's Hospital will have their own room and, where necessary, parents will be able to stay with the children. That would have helped me on many, many occasions.'

Cambridge University Hospitals states:

'The East of England is the only region in the UK currently without a hospital built for children. Our future hospital will provide care for every child and young person in the region. It will offer the level of care so many families need, without having to travel hundreds of miles to get it.

'It will be the first hospital in the world to fully combine mental and physical healthcare. This provides young people and their families with seamless care for individual needs. It will be underpinned by world-class research in child health and genomics.

'More intensive care and specialist wards will provide safe spaces to get better. Dedicated operating theatres will assist thousands of life-saving procedures.'

In April 2020, CCH had its Strategic Outline Case approved by the Department of Health and Social Care, NHS England and NHS Improvement.

Below: the Cambridge Biomedical Campus - which includes the Royal Papworth and Addenbrookes hospitals, the MRC Molecular Research Laboratory, and AstraZeneca's Discovery building - which will be home to the Cambridge Children's Hospital (courtesy of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus)