The 2021 Question:
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?
About the Prize
Since 2011, the Wolfson Economics Prize has created a platform for fresh thinking which can challenge orthodoxy in economics and public policy. Entry is free and open to anyone, with the winner receiving £250,000.
Key Dates
Prize Launch
Entry deadline
Finalists announced
Winner revealed at awards ceremony
“This Prize wants to draw on innovation from around the world, to help create hospitals that work better for patients, their staff and the communities they serve.”
Lord Wolfson
The Prize question
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?
Entrants are asked to explore this question in detail in a submission of up to 10,000 words (plus a non-technical summary of 1,000 words). Entrants can also include charts, drawings, maps, tables, links to multimedia assets, etc and are welcome to add Appendices containing ancillary material. Entries should be unconstrained by scale: it is equally acceptable to focus on one element of the hospital as to consider the facility in its entirety. However, in preparing their responses, entrants are strongly encouraged to show how their submission can address the four following areas.
1. Patient experience
Entrants are encouraged to identify specific issues in the current hospital model and then propose solutions which will lead to improvement in the experience of patients and visitors. For example, how does effective ward and room design minimise noise, reduce stress and maintain dignity whilst ensuring patients do not become isolated? How could greater use of green space and planting accelerate recovery times? To what extent does the aesthetic appearance of a hospital matter to the end user, and if so, how might it be enhanced?
2. Clinical outcomes
Submissions should demonstrate how effective design and planning can underpin improved clinical outcomes. For example, would the physical separation of emergency and non-urgent elective surgery benefit both groups of patients? What types of facilities would be required to make this feasible within the NHS? We also know that technological advances such as robotics, artificial intelligence and remote medicine are changing the way in which care is delivered and cannot be ignored. How will new clinical services and techniques impact on future hospital design? Does modular design offer an answer? Is it possible to plan for the unknown? We would also welcome suggestions that improve infection control in hospitals and enhance patient safety.
3. Staff wellbeing and productivity
There is evidence that a well-designed and functioning building can assist staff to perform in their roles. Designing floorplans so that doctors and nurses can move through the hospital with ease, incorporating communications and monitoring equipment as part of the build stage, and introducing on-site laboratory facilities to fast-track results are some examples of this. Alongside delivering against its primary functions, hospitals must also be welcoming work environments. This encompasses a range of considerations for staff, including transportation links, the availability of shower and locker facilities and access to green spaces. We also need to acknowledge that hospitals are 24hr buildings. How can we ensure that the hospital workforce has access to high quality food and rest facilities throughout the day and night?
4. Connection to the wider health and social care infrastructure
The benefits of a well-functioning hospital are not restricted to the site alone. We would welcome submissions which explore how planning can achieve better integration between hospital-led and non-hospital NHS and social care services. As the boundaries between primary, secondary and tertiary services increasingly blur, do we need to rethink the notion of a hospital as a building and instead re-define it as a set of services? Another approach could look beyond the commissioning of services, and instead assess the role of hospitals as anchor institutions which foster knowledge sharing, such as through co-location with science and research. Is it feasible for hospitals to become centres of prevention as well as cure – moving our health system from orientating solely around managing illness towards promoting health?
5. Additional Information
Alongside the four priorities listed above, the Judges would welcome ideas which can be delivered in an environmentally sustainable way.
Entrants should be emboldened to think radically about what the hospital should be in the decade ahead. The Judges welcome entrants from anywhere in the world but are seeking solutions which could be applied to the health service in the United Kingdom. We encourage submissions from all parts of the community and would particularly welcome submissions from cross-disciplinary teams.
Detailed financial modelling is not expected, but submissions should nonetheless demonstrate how their idea(s) could be delivered within a normal capital envelope for new hospitals, or alternatively quantify the benefits of exceeding normal budgets.
The Prize Team
Rt. Hon. Professor the Lord Kakkar PC
Chair of the Judging Panel
The Rt. Hon. Professor the Lord Ajay Kakkar PC is Professor of Surgery, University College London, Chairman of UCLPartners Academic Health Science Partnership and Director of the Thrombosis Research Institute London.
Lord Kakkar completed his medical degree at King’s College London and received his PhD from Imperial College London. His research interests include the prevention and treatment of venous and arterial thromboembolic disease and cancer associated thrombosis.
Lord Kakkar was created a Life Peer in 2010 and sits on the crossbenches of the House of Lords. He was Chairman of the House of Lords Appointments Commission from 2013–2018. He is Chairman of the Judicial Appointments Commission and was appointed a member of Her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council in 2014. He serves as Chairman of The King’s Fund and Chairman of UK Biobank.
Dr. Brian Donley
Judge
Dr. Brian Donley is CEO of Cleveland Clinic London – a 184 bed acute hospital, with 29 ITU beds, opening in January 2022. Cleveland Clinic will also open a state of the art outpatient building in central London in September 2021.
Prior to this appointment, Dr. Donley was Chief of Staff and Chief of the Clinical Enterprise for the Cleveland Clinic Health System. Previously, he served as President of Regional Operations for the Cleveland Clinic Health System.
Dr. Donley is Professor of Surgery at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons. He attended the University of Notre Dame and graduated with Distinction from the University of Michigan Medical School. He completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School.
Dame Elaine Inglesby-Burke CBE
Judge
Dame Elaine Inglesby-Burke is a non-executive director at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and former Group Chief Nursing Officer at Salford Royal Hospital and the Northern Care Alliance Group, with over forty years’ experience and service in the NHS.
Nationally, she has been recognised as an advocate for patient safety and safe nurse staffing. She was a member of the Nursing and Care Quality Forum and was an influential voice on the Berwick National Advisory Group on the Safety of Patients in England.
In 2015, she was awarded a CBE for services to nursing and in 2019, NHS England’s first national Chief Nursing Officer’s (CNO) Gold Award for Nursing. In 2020, she was awarded a Damehood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Dame Laura Lee
Judge
Laura began her career working as a clinical nurse specialist in Edinburgh, where she administered chemotherapy to Maggie Keswick Jencks, before becoming the first Chief Executive of Maggie’s, a role she continues to the present day. Laura shared Maggie’s vision of a cancer support centre housed in a non-clinical and uplifting environment where anybody affected by cancer could visit to access practical information, psychological and emotional support to help them build a life beyond a cancer diagnosis. There are now 26 centres with plans for future centres both in the UK and overseas. In 2016 Laura was awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor from Queen Margaret University, and in 2019 was awarded a Damehood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
Robert A.M. Stern
Judge
Robert A.M. Stern, practicing architect, teacher, and writer, is the Founder and Senior Partner of the internationally acclaimed Robert A.M. Stern Architects, a firm with an extraordinarily diverse portfolio that has been pivotal in reintroducing respect for tradition to contemporary practice. Mr. Stern served as Dean of the Yale School of Architecture from 1998 to 2016, and in 2017 was honoured with the Topaz Medallion, awarded jointly by the American Institute of Architects and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture in recognition of outstanding service to architectural education. He was the 2011 Driehaus Prize laureate and in 2007 received the Athena Award from the Congress for the New Urbanism. Mr. Stern and his firm have designed numerous buildings across the United States for healthcare and healthcare professional education.
Nigel Wilson
Judge
Nigel joined Legal & General in 2009 as Group CFO, appointed Group CEO in 2012.
He is a current advisor to the Government’s Social Care Green Paper and Life Sciences Industrial Strategy Implementation Board and is Chair of the Bank of England’s Climate Financial Risk Forum, Innovation Working Group.
Nigel was a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group (2015-2016), Chairman of the Investment Association’s review of Executive Pay (2016-2017) and the Government’s review of Mission Led Business (2016- 2017). He was also a member of the Government’s Patient Capital Review Industry Panel (2017–2018) and Commissioner in Resolution Foundation’s Intergenerational Commission (2017–2018)
Lord Wolfson
Founder
Simon Wolfson graduated with a law degree from Trinity College, Cambridge.
He started working for Next in 1991 as a Sales Assistant and joined the Board as Sales and Marketing Director in 1997. In 1999 he was made Managing Director and was appointed Chief Executive in August 2001. Since he became Chief Executive Next shares have outperformed the FTSE 100 index by more than 500%.
Simon has always had an active interest in economics and politics and was created a Peer in May 2010.
Robert Ede
Prize Director
Submit your entry
Conference
Date: Tuesday 23rd March, 15:00-18:00 GMT (London)
Designing the Hospital of the Future is a half-day conference which explores the themes of this year’s Wolfson Economics Prize with panel discussions from members of the government’s hospital building programme, front-line clinicians, patient advocates and experts in the built environment.
15.00 – 15.15 Introducing the Wolfson Economics Prize 2021
- Lord Wolfson of Aspley Guise – Chief Executive, Next plc and Founder, Wolfson Economics Prize
- Rt Hon Prof Lord Ajay Kakkar – Chair of Judges, Wolfson Economics Prize 2021; Crossbench Life Peer, House of Lords and Professor of Surgery, University College London
The conference sessions will be Chaired by Baroness Cavendish of Little Venice – Author of Extra Time: Ten Lessons For An Ageing World, Senior Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School and former Director, Number 10 Policy Unit
15.15 – 15.45 Panel: The Biggest Hospital Building Programme in a Generation?
The UK Government has pledged to undertake the biggest hospital building programme in a generation – constructing 40 new hospitals (with a competition for a further eight) all to be delivered by 2030. Hear from two of the leading figures involved in the programme from the NHS and the Government as they discuss current considerations and challenges for the estate in the years ahead.
- Natalie Forrest – Senior Responsible Officer, New Hospital Programme and former CEO, Chase Farm Hospital
- Craig McWilliam – Programme Director, New Hospital Programme; Capacity Delivery Director, NHS England & Improvement
16.00 – 16.30 Panel: Who Is the Hospital For? Designing Hospitals for Patients, Practitioners and the Public
Alongside their core clinical purpose, hospitals perform a myriad of function as a centres of employment, research and the local community. Featuring patient representatives and leading clinicians, this panel will explore the considerations that staff, patients and the public at large would like to see reflected in the design of new hospitals.
- Bami Adenipekun – Charity Ambassador, Maggie’s; Director, Inspired to Soar
- Dr John Dean – Clinical Director for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety, Royal College of Physicians
- Imelda Redmond CBE – National Director, Healthwatch
16.40 – 16.55 Panel: Should Hospitals Be Beautiful?
The spotlight talk will ask what we can learn from hospital building in the past, exploring the ways in which previous generations in the UK and internationally have imagined, planned and adapted healthcare facilities, reflecting both the medical and stylistic considerations of the age.
- Professor Richard Cork – Art Critic, Historian, Broadcaster and the author of The Healing Presence of Art: A History of Western Art in Hospitals
17.00 – 18.00 “Ask the Judges”
Your opportunity to put questions to the Judging Panel for this year’s Wolfson Economics Prize, which brings together a group of experts representing different elements of hospital planning and design. Questions can be submitted in advance of the conference by using the link below, during the session we’ll also be taking live questions for the judges from registered audience members.
- Rt Hon Prof Lord Ajay Kakkar – Chair of Judges, Wolfson Economics Prize 2021; Crossbench Life Peer, House of Lords and Professor of Surgery, University College London
- Dr Brian Donley – Chief Executive, Cleveland Clinic London
- Dame Elaine Inglesby-Burke – Non-Executive Director, NICE and former Chief Nurse, Northern Care Alliance
- Dame Laura Lee – Chief Executive, Maggie’s
- Robert A.M. Stern – Founding Partner, Robert A.M. Stern Architects and former Dean, Yale School of Architecture
- Nigel Wilson – Chief Executive, Legal and General
The conference will conclude with remarks by Robert Ede – Director, Wolfson Economics Prize 2021 and Head of Health & Social Care Unit, Policy Exchange
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