The high street hospital model

The High Street Hospital Model is our response to the Wolfson Economics Prize challenge of “Hospitals of the Future - How would you design and plan new hospitals to radically improve patient experiences, clinical outcomes, staff wellbeing, and integration with wider health and social care?” – and have created an Arup led thought piece which uses the Sheffield city context as a test case or a scalable healthcare model. 

The key challenges we sought to address were NHS hospital pressures, the demise of city centre retail, and the relevance of wider health determinants and need for preventative care in any future healthcare model.  To address these challenges, integrated healthcare facilities need to be better connected and more strategically located in cities, with a stronger identity and better links to the community. Our concept is to repurpose vacant, major retail stores in cities and towns, relocating clinical departments with high patient traffic. 

Our work collaborated with clinicians, local government officials and academics to provide an informed holistic solution – including significant input from our co-authors Dr Helena Parsons and Professor Steve Haake.