Best practice and know-how are often hard to share effectively among NHS EFM departments – due both to organisational, social, and political barriers, and a lack of an effective overarching strategy for knowledge dissemination. A team from the University of Cambridge Engineering Design Centre (EDC) and Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) is investigating how best to overcome these barriers and enable effective knowledge flows among such professionals. Carl-Magnus von Behr, a PhD researcher at the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), Professor Tim Minshall, the inaugural Dr John C Taylor Professor of Innovation at the University, and head of the Institute for Manufacturing and its Centre for Technology Management (CTM), and John Clarkson, Professor of Engineering Design, present the first results from the initial research stages.
Hospitals are in a state of continuous flux and change as a result of a variety of influences – ranging from chronic stresses such as demo