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The Role of Data Management And Technology In Making FM More Efficient In Healthcare Facilities

With the increasing dependency on new technology and intelligence, healthcare organisations are looking to improve their understanding of data for the benefit patients. Here, Chief Information Officer of NHS Property Services (NHSPS), Roslyn Churchill, discusses the role data and technology plays in the world of facilities management and healthcare estates sustainability.

We are now in an age where digital data has become the essence of what we do. Improving data culture and ensuring that data is leveraged to make better decisions is no longer a nice to have for organisations. With the ever-growing rise in digital technology and the growing use of AI, we need to consider how technology can be used to our advantage in healthcare facilities.

Improving facilities management in healthcare consists of many problem-solving tasks. However, the tasks share one ultimate goal: to enable excellent patient care. For example, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and lockdowns were put in place, many felt the world shift to an unusually slow pace. But in healthcare, workers moved at a rapid speed, and therefore required information and data to flow through at the same pace. During the pandemic, many organisations found that frontline engineers did not have the technology they needed to run efficiently as possible during a time of incredible uncertainty. To tackle this issue, companies implemented initiatives such as rolling out devices to workers on the frontline to ensure full connectivity across teams and vast geographic distances. The bolstering of technological networks is continuing to help organisations flourish to this day and will remain the case in the long-term.

Data intelligence is the lifeblood of healthcare facilities. Not only does it supply key insight that the business needs in order to run efficiently, but it also improves our visibility and the way we proactively monitor the health of our operations. The better the data available, the easier it is to identify which buildings are performing well, which have a level of significant backlog maintenance, and the level of investment required. Additionally, from a security perspective, we know cyber-attacks are a complex problem that can impact any organisation, having intelligence is critical to understanding threats and bad actors, and therefore enable organisations to build more robust defences against future security issues.

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Within healthcare, a data-driven strategy can provide better quality and care to patients. Organisations are focussing on implementing strategies that centre on improving understanding of data literacy, data maturity, and data management within facilities management. In fact, a recent survey found that almost half (47%) of healthcare facility decision makers spend most of their time manually gathering and analysing data when creating reports¹. Knowing how to read and utilise data is essential for any strategy and enabling staff to feel confident in making decisions based on insights. Coupled with improving understanding of data, leaders are continually looking to restructure their organisation to make sure that digital transformation is embedded into day-to-day ways of working, whilst ensuring that patients remain at the heart of that strategy. Of course, reorganisation may result in big cultural changes within teams and such change can be felt across every level of employee, so it is vital for organisations to be as transparent as possible with any forthcoming changes or new uses of data.

Through enabling transformation strategies, organisations are choosing to work towards developing smarter buildings. By pulling intelligence from different data points gathered from relevant building management systems, organisations are looking to analyse data which form the basis of sustainable thinking. Technologies, such as AI and machine learning, can be crucial to understanding the health of buildings, enabling organisations to better predict when a problem might occur. For instance, the boilers might fail if they are not replaced in the next year, or if an ageing appliance is experiencing a loss of efficiency. This could reap huge rewards and efficiencies for organisations in terms of both time and money.

With healthcare professionals and patients front of mind, sustainable buildings lend themselves to healthier communities and improved patient outcomes. With sustainability at the forefront of national media, government priority lists and strategies, information teams are well positioned to using the most recent data and technology to help develop property with a green carbon footprint. Alongside the use of data, leveraging use of sensors and Internet of Things (IoT), digital twins and AI and machine learning can build a strong armoury of information and analytics, providing organisation leaders with the insight and tools needed to truly deliver on sustainability commitments.

In order to make facility management more efficient, we as an industry know that we have keep up with the ever-changing life cycle of technology – constant upgrades and replacements are only a couple of the factors we have to consider. By having a robust data management strategy and process, as well as regular implementation of new technologies, the healthcare sector can manage continuous change in times of uncertainty, adapting and influencing to deliver the high quality of services to healthcare professionals and patients.

1: Estates and Facilities Data in the Healthcare Sector: An asset or a liability? Key Findings.