Active Projects

Assessing Transport Implications of Healthcare Facility Reconfiguration using GIS

Transport accessibility to healthcare facilities is a major issue in the United Kingdom and has been recently demonstrated by the shift away from providing healthcare in acute hospitals to ‘care closer to home’. World Health Organization (WHO) considers accessibility to healthcare facilities as an essential right for all people.

Project Facts

Start date: February 2009
End date: July 2012
Investigators Professor Andrew Price; Professor Steve Ison; Dr. Mohammed Quddus
Staff Employed Omid Titidezh, BSc, MsC, Full time PhD Student
Status Active

Project Partners

  • NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland Primary Care Trust
  • NHS Leicester City PCT
  • The Prince’s Foundation
  • Department of Health- Estates and Facilities
  • HUDU (London Healthy Urban Development Unit)

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]

This PhD built off our recently DH funded research with the Princes Foundation (PHIФ: Planning Healthcare Infrastructure; Implementing the Next Stage Review Healthcare Infrastructure) and involved working very closely with the local healthcare sector during a period of major reconfiguration. Based on over 1000 responses to two questionnaires and the extensive use of GIS modelling to assess the potential impact of healthcare facilities relocation the research:
• explored the accessibility and transport issues associated with the UK healthcare facilities;
• identified important factors affecting accessibility of healthcare facilities and the data requirements;
• evaluated the potential of GIS and statistical methods to support the assessment of relocation impact;
• developed an accessibility model of healthcare facilities using statistical methods including fuel consumption and CO2 emissions; and
• provided recommendations for assessing accessibility by exploring different scenarios.