The New Hospital Programme (NHP), in collaboration with the NHS Strategy Unit, has launched what it describes a ‘powerful’ new, free-to-use demand and capacity model ‘to transform how the NHS plans future hospital and community services’.
The model has been awarded the Florence Nightingale Award for Excellence in Health and Care Analytics by the Health Foundation and Royal Statistical Society (see photo). Judges praised its ‘statistical rigour, real-world impact, and commitment to transparency’.
The NHP said: “For decades, forecasting demand for NHS services has relied on inconsistent, opaque tools. The new model sets a new benchmark for transparency in public sector analytics, providing a flexible and evidence-based approach to building new hospitals.”
Developed in line with Treasury standards, and formally adopted by NHS England, the model is now classed as a National Business Critical Model. Its open-source codebase, documentation, and quality assurance processes, make it one of the largest NHS analytical code releases to date.
The NHP team added: “Built on over 140 million patient-level records, this nationally consistent, open-source model is the first of its kind to support long-term NHS infrastructure decisions at scale. It is already being used by local systems and regions to forecast future demand, inform service planning, and shape investment in both hospital and community care.
Key features include:
- Granular forecasting: ‘Grounded in patient-level data to predict future demand by service, condition, age group or location’.
- Fully adjustable: Incorporates over 100 local variables, including demography, activity trends, and service redesign.
- Models uncertainty: Uses advanced simulation to explore future scenarios – such as ageing populations or digital care expansion.
- Supports business cases: Delivers clear, scenario-based outputs that inform both local decisions and national strategies.
NHP added: “This is not just a hospital model. It also supports the ‘left shift’ to community care, a key ambition of the NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England. It helps quantify the impact of care redesign, with a unique classification of 92 potentially mitigable activity types – including 29 targeting avoidable emergency admissions.
The model is already supporting major national strategies, including:
- The NHS 10 Year Health Plan for England – ‘helping model future elective and emergency care, predicting hospital activity that can be prevented or moved into a community setting’.
- The National Community Services Strategy – identifying opportunities for care closer to home.
- The DHSC 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy – guiding long-term investment.
- Collaboration with ONS – linking housing growth to healthcare needs.
