Making healthcare mobile

Mobile solutions are a key driver in technology so it’s no surprise to find that they’re an emerging solution in healthcare too. In this case the app comes not on your smart phone but on the back of a truck.

For the past 13 years UK company Vanguard Healthcare has been providing hospitals across Europe with a range of mobile clinical solutions, including temporary operating theatres and even wards.

Designed to alleviate waiting lists for surgical procedures, each is developed in conjunction with hospital management and clinical staff, kitted out to their specifications, and provided as a fully bespoke, turnkey solution.

Today there are about 40 such units located across the UK, Sweden, Italy and the Benelux countries, including one in Letterkenny, Co Donegal.

Temporary solution

By their nature they are a temporary solution for hospitals but one which puts the patient first in terms of reducing delays, according to Ian Gillespie, Vanguard's chief executive.

“Obviously if a hospital is looking at having a mobile operating theatre for a number of years, it would be better off building one,” he says.

“But if they need one as a short- to medium-term solution, to clear backlogs or to cope with seasonal spikes, then they are a very cost-effective option.”

The idea behind Vanguard Healthcare was to provide the medical sector with a solution that is taken for granted in other industries – flexible capacity. "Vanguard was set up at a time when waiting times in the UK were up to two years in some cases," says Gillespie, who is from Belfast.

“There is an idea that healthcare demand is always rising but the fact is it is never constant; you get spikes in demand for all sorts of reasons, from winter bugs to hospital refurbishments, and it is these spikes in demand that are hard for hospitals to deal with.”

Having the option of extra capacity as and when required has become a familiar one among NHS hospitals, he says. Vanguard's surgical units, which include anaesthetic room, theatre and recovery area, are 15m long and have independent air, water, gas and electric systems, meeting the same quality standards that traditionally built facilities must meet.

“To date we have had more than a quarter of a million procedures take place in them, from orthopaedics to ophthalmic, wherever pressure points occur,” says Gillespie.

The average length of service for a Vanguard unit is five months but the company has had contracts lasting from one week to a number of years.

Logistically complex

Initial barriers to be overcome from hospital management included fears that mobile units would be logistically complex to avail of. This is not the case, he says. “The other early fear was that they would be expensive but we now have the case studies to show that it’s a cost effective, pay-as-you-go solution to clear backlogs. And, of course, it’s an alternative to having to send people out of the country for treatment.”

Over the past decade the public perception of Vanguard’s mobile operating theatres has changed too. “When we started there was a sense that we were in some way an indicator of the failure of the prevailing health system. We were seen as a stop-gap solution to that failure.

“That has changed too. Now we are seen as an effective, flexible solution that helps a hospital ‘rightsize’ its services to cope with spikes in demand without over-investing.”