Unique collaboration by four leading universities creates a strategic centre for innovation in healthcare infrastructure

A unique collaborative venture by Imperial College and the universities of Salford, Loughborough and Reading has created an £11m research centre, co-ordinated by Imperial College's Tanaka Business School.

The new centre, HaCIRIC (Health and Care Infrastructure Research and Innovation Centre), is supported by a new grant of £7.2m from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and will promote innovation in healthcare infrastructures for the 21st century.

The centre is being established at a time of profound change in the UK's health and social care services, and unprecedented investment to renew the built and technical infrastructure. Tens of billions of pounds are being spent building new hospitals and local health facilities, as well as on new IT systems and medical technologies.  But technological and scientific advances as well as changing demographics all mean that the infrastructure planned today could prove obsolete in 20 years' time.

Ensuring the investment in infrastructure is right for the emerging forms of care delivery requires careful planning and innovative approaches, but this has proved a major challenge for policy makers, the care services and industry. HaCIRIC has been established to tackle these challenges by working at the interface between care services and their supporting infrastructures.  It will create a unique resource of skills and knowledge to support evidence based decision and policy making by government, industry and the health and care services.

HaCIRIC's programme will include major new research projects designed to improve the way both new and existing built and technical infrastructures for healthcare are used, and how they can be better planned, procured, delivered and evolved. It will also investigate the likely impact of these new innovative approaches on care services. The research programme has been developed in partnership with the key stakeholders from the care system, including the Department of Health, the NHS, the Department of Trade and Industry, and the construction and healthcare industries.

Professor James Barlow from the Tanaka Business School, and one of HaCIRIC's four Academic Directors, said that "The government has rightly been tackling the historic under-investment in Britain's health system and has coupled this with a modernisation of services and renewal of outdated buildings. The danger, however, is that we are creating an inflexible infrastructure that will not meet the country's needs in 2025. We currently have a fragmented system for planning and financing healthcare infrastructure and HaCIRIC will help to overcome this."

HaCIRIC is holding an industry day on 30 March under the auspices of the University of Salford. With presentations by internationally leading academics and practitioners, this aims to bring to the fore key issues related to the provision of an infrastructure to meet the needs of 21st century healthcare, and will provide delegates with the opportunity to engage with members of HaCIRIC to discuss the early research findings.

For more information :
Eoin Bedford
Press and PR Manager
Imperial College London
Tanaka Business School
South Kensington campus
London SW7 2AZ
Email: e.bedford@imperial.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 207 594 9154
Mobile: +44 (0) 772 515 9796

Notes to editors

1. HaCIRIC is a collaboration between:
" Built Environment Innovation Centre, Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London
" Salford Centre for Research and Innovation, University of Salford
" Innovative Construction Research Centre, University of Reading
" Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre, Loughborough University

2. Additional partners from other universities, industry and the care system will be involved in specific research projects. Together this represents a resource valued at more than £11m, of which £7.23m is EPSRC support; £2.9m is from the four existing research centres; £500,000 is from the Department of Trade and Industry; and £720,000 is from industrial partners.

3. HaCIRIC will be funded for 5 years.

About Imperial College London and Tanaka Business School www.imperial.ac.uk/tanaka
Consistently rated in the top three UK university institutions, Imperial College London is a world leading science-based university whose reputation for excellence in teaching and research attracts students (11,000) and staff (6,000) of the highest international quality. Innovative research at the College explores the interface between science, medicine, engineering and management and delivers practical solutions that enhance the quality of life and the environment - underpinned by a dynamic enterprise culture. Website: www.imperial.ac.uk

Imperial College's Tanaka Business School is a world-class provider of business education and research, focusing primarily on Imperial strengths in innovation and entrepreneurship, finance and healthcare management. The School offers full-time and executive MBAs, Master's programmes in Finance, Risk Management, International Health Management, Management and Actuarial Finance; and a Doctoral programme.

About the University of Salford www.salford.ac.uk
Salford has the only university department to receive a 6* RAE rating in Built and Human Environment  Studies (www.buhu.salford.ac.uk). It is in the top third of UK institutions for research according to the Research Assessment Exercise 2001.

Internationally recognised as an enterprising university, Salford was the first university to establish Academic Enterprise as an integrated third strand of the University's activities, of equal importance to teaching and research. A combination of this enterprising attitude, top rated teaching and focusing its programmes to real world needs means that over 90% of Salford graduates are in employment or go on to further study within six months of graduating.

Salford University's School of the Built Environment (www.sobe.salford.ac.uk) offers both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in many areas including construction and project management, IT in construction, facilities management and lean construction, and the MSc/PGDip/PGCert of Built Environment for Healthcare. There are currently more than 150 PhD students studying the above areas.

About University of Reading
The University of Reading is in the top twenty of the most research powerful universities in the UK [as measured in the Power League Table]. Over £20 million worth of contracts are received annually to provide expertise in research to a range of groups including governments, industry, the EU, UK charities and research councils. http://www.info.rdg.ac.uk/research/
 
The School of Construction Management is a world class school using its strengths in strategic analysis, business development, project management and internal and external environmental management to develop the leading firms in UK and international construction. The School provides Masters programmes in Construction Management, Project Management, Inclusive Environments and Intelligent Buildings as well as tailored programmes for specific organisations.  http://www.cme.rdg.ac.uk/ . The Innovative Construction Research Centre is a multidiscipline group of academic and research staff that works with over 70 industrial organisations to improve the competitiveness of the UK construction industry. http://icrc-reading.org/ICRC/ .

About Loughborough University http://www.lboro.ac.uk/
Loughborough University has been identified as providing "Best value for money RESEARCH in the UK" (HESA, 30 September 2004) and has the UK's highest 'spin-out' (exploitation) rate relative to research funding.  It has also been ranked 9th out of 123 UK Universities in 2004, and employs 3,000 staff to undertake research and provide education and services for 12,000 students on its 166 ha campus; one of the UK's largest.  There are 24 academic departments and over 30 Research Institutes and Centres.

The Loughborough Innovative Manufacturing and Construction Research Centre (IMCRC) is a multidisciplinary group of over 40 academic staff undertaking leading edge, collaborative research and will contribute to HaCIRIC through the Construction Management and the Healthcare Engineering Groups.  The Construction Management Group, within the Department of Civil and Building Engineering, achieved a 5* rating in the last RAE, and has considerable expertise in standardisation, offsite manufacture and the development of advanced engineering informatics in the design, construction and management of constructed facilities.  The Healthcare Engineering Group's focus is on translational research with an aim to improve healthcare delivery by meeting clinical need and promoting industry and small business growth. The group leads the £8m EPSRC funded Regenerative Medicine Grand Challenge.