A new open-source demand and capacity model has been launched to help shape the design and planning of NHS hospitals for decades to come.
The model is a tool that can give estimations of what hospitals and healthcare settings can expect in terms of patient capacity and flow.
Developed by the Strategy Unit, a specialist unit within the NHS, in partnership with the New Hospital Programme (NHP), the tool is designed to improve the way future healthcare infrastructure is planned across the NHS in England.
The model represents a step forward in transparency, consistency and collaboration in healthcare planning, Chris Beeley, Head of Data Science at the Strategy Unit, stated in a blog.
Hospital development teams within the NHP face the complex task of predicting what future healthcare demand might look like, factoring in everything from population growth to medical advances and shifts in how care is delivered.
A new open-source demand and capacity model has been launched to help shape the design and planning of NHS hospitals for decades to come
Existing models have struggled with key issues such as omitting important variables like future population health, offering overly simplistic forecasts, and hiding the assumptions behind the results.
To tackle these problems, the Strategy Unit created a model that is openly available to all NHP schemes.
Notably, it is entirely open source, with its code published on GitHub for anyone to inspect, test, and adapt — free of charge.
“The implications go beyond technical interest. Transparency helps build trust, open sharing drives quality, and making publicly funded tools freely available ensures greater public value,” Beeley said in the blog.
Developed by the Strategy Unit, a specialist unit within the NHS, in partnership with the New Hospital Programme
Open-source modelling is gaining traction in healthcare analytics, with national policy now encouraging it.
The government’s Data Saves Lives strategy specifically calls for code created with public funds to be openly shared across the health and care system.
The NHP model allows hospital planning teams to avoid starting from scratch, offering a robust, adaptable framework that can be built upon and improved over time. The aim is to set a new standard for NHS analytical tools, ensuring future hospitals are designed with long-term needs in mind.
As the NHS prepares for a new wave of hospital developments, tools like this are expected to play a growing role in helping deliver healthcare infrastructure that is both fit for purpose and value for money.