Building patient-centred specialist care

Cancer treatment is going through a period of extraordinary change as breakthroughs emerge at dramatic pace. Here, Niek Grobben, project manager at leading engineering, design, and project management consultancy, Royal HaskoningDHV, a member of the Dutch society for technology in health and IFHE member organisation, the NVTG, (Nederlandse Vereniging voor Technologie in de Gezondheidszorg), discusses how building design can impact clinical outcomes at specialist treatment centres such as the new oncology unit at University Hospitals Leuven in Belgium.

Recent evidence has suggested that cancer sufferers who are treated at specialist oncology units tend to have better outcomes. A 2016 academic study into ovarian cancer survival rates among patients treated in Phase III Trial Active Cancer Centres in the UK1 suggested that survival rates from ovarian cancer in the UK could be improved by 45% if patients were treated in specialised regional centres rather than general hospitals. As a result, we are increasingly seeing a move towards creating specialist centres to focus on and treat conditions such as cancer and other specific diseases. With this focus on one specific group of illnesses, these facilities tend to offer more personalised treatment, and are better equipped to focus on the holistic approach – from diagnosis and treatment through to aftercare, delivering best practice and fully exploiting advances in patient treatment options. 

In such care, the challenge for hospitals is to respond to, and keep abreast of, new knowledge and techniques as quickly as possible so patients can experience the maximum benefit. That is exactly the approach being taken at one of Belgium’s leading hospitals, University Hospitals Leuven. Its new multi-disciplinary unit will centralise care in a new 25,000 m2 oncology centre with the aim of treating around 35,000 patients every year.