Active Projects

MSV: Integrated programme on the application of modelling, simulation and visualisation to the delivery of enhanced performance and value in healthcare facilities

Project Facts

Start date: June 2011
End date: November 2013
Investigators Professor Andrew Price; Dr. Monjur Mourshed, Prof Malcolm Cooke; Dr Chris Harty; Dr Peter Demian
Staff Employed Shariful Shikder; Dr M. Ashikur Joarder; Dr Zulfikar Adamu; Richard Davies.
Status Completed

Project Partners

• Charnwood Neighbourhood Housing, Babington Court Care Home, Fielding Court
• HOK Architects, Skanska UK
• Simul8, SIMUL8 Corporation,
• Assura, Active Plan, MACE, Space Syntax, Integra,
• Arup, Avanti Architects, DLA Freemanwhite,
• Sedgwick Igoe,
• Nightingale Associates
• Great Ormond Street Hospital
• NHS Leicestershire and Rutland PCT, NHS Leicester City PCT, NHS Milton Keynes PCT, Southampton PCT, NHS Salford Royal PCT, NHS Taunton and Somerset Foundation Trust, NHS St Thomas’s and Guys PCT, NHS Salford & Salford Royal FT

Project Partners

HaCIRIC
Department of Civil and Building Engineering
Loughborough University
Ashby Road
Loughborough
Leicestershire
LE11 3TU
T: +44 (0) 15 0922 2627
E: [email protected]

Understanding how healthcare infrastructure innovations impact on economic, social and clinical outcomes requires a wide range of methods to be deployed. Impacts need to be captured across different levels in a health system – from individual departments or wards in a hospital, for example, through individual organisations such as a hospital trust to local health economies – and over different timescales. ‘Innovation’ ranges from the changes in building design to reconfiguration of services across local health systems. This requires the use of quantitative approaches such as simulation and modelling, and qualitative methods. 

We have been developing simulation models and analytical tools as an aid to decision-making. The research teams at Loughborough and Reading Universities drew on their previous research on evidence-based design to focus on the use of modelling, simulation and visualisation (MSV) in a number of practical areas, notably how healthcare environmental design (lighting and natural ventilation) can improve performance and outcomes, and the use of virtual reality (VR) and Building Information Modelling (BIM) to improve planning, design, construction and management of healthcare facilities. The work comprised a number of linked projects, described separately:

MSV1: Identify and develop theory on performance indicators, parameters and modelling approaches to be considered during the design of healthcare facilities.

MSV2: Develop a decision support system using modelling and simulation to optimise lighting design of healthcare spaces.

MSV3: Investigate energy and indoor environment of healthcare buildings (including sheltered accommodations for the elderly) from health perspectives by monitoring of significant indoor environmental parameters.

MSV4: Develop a CFD based evaluation method to improve natural ventilation, environmental performance and maintain health without harm in healthcare spaces.

MSV5: Describe and analyse the implementation and use of BIM tools and processes in the design and construction of two major UK hospitals.