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“Smart Pods”: New vehicles to take healthcare to the community

Harrow’s research in mobility design includes complex, multi-stakeholder, evidence-based projects where the principal outcome is the artefact itself, reported in conference papers and invited presentations.

This published conference paper arose from an EPSRC-funded project (RCA £211,644; total £625,896) 2007–10, which built on Design for Patient Safety: Future Ambulance, a year-long study, initiated by NHS National Patient Safety Agency, to investigate how better design of vehicles and equipment could improve the safety of patients and ambulance staff. Harrow was Principal Investigator and supervised a funded PhD student.

The Smart Pods project addressed the whole system of emergency and urgent pre-hospital care. It brought together research by clinicians, designers, social scientists, ergonomists and operations management analysts from four universities (Loughborough, West of England, Bath, Plymouth) and resulted in a range of innovative propositions to enable clinicians to take healthcare to the community and reduce patient journeys and hospital admissions.

The project responded to changes in policy necessitating a reconfiguration of urgent care using a new group of healthcare professionals, Emergency Care Practitioners. These are trained with additional skills to take healthcare to the community, reducing hospital visits and achieving high levels of patient satisfaction. Until now, ECPs have been using out-dated and inappropriate equipment.

The system comprises three levels: treatment space, treatment packages and vehicle systems to make the components fully mobile within the community. Research activities were developed in four work streams: operations management and procurement, ergonomic analysis of clinical activities, vehicle design and the socio-technical framework.

The system was exhibited at ‘EPSRC Pioneers 09’, UK (2009). Related publications included Harrow et al., Improving Patient Safety (2008). Harrow and Thompson (RCA) presented the project at ‘Healthcare Design.09’, USA (2009). Smart Pods were featured in the London Evening Standard, Daily Mail, Autocar and Nursing Times.