King’s Health Partners — one of the UK’s six Academic Health Science Centres, and a partnership between Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, King’s College London, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust — are creating a long-term estate masterplan vision with collaboration at its heart.

It will build on world-class existing assets, such as the London Institute for Healthcare Engineering, the Advanced Therapies Centre, the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, and the Centre for Translational Informatics, and bring together London’s existing international community of life science industries and academic institutions. Three specialised healthcare, research and teaching hubs will be created focusing on MedTech, biomedicine and translational medicine. The plan will treble the amount of space across the existing estate to 1.1 million sqm by 2050.

Attracting the best talent and investment from around the world, the transformed estate will be home to a community where like-minded professionals from healthcare, science and business work together to advance medicine. The estate will progress the study and practice of healthcare, delivering better care for patients in an exceptional environment for staff.

By bringing clinical, research and educational institutions together with the life science industry in a collaborative space an ecosystem will be created where the best academic and commercial researchers work closely with clinicians and entrepreneurs to unlock the discovery of the next generation of medicines, devices, software and diagnostic tests.

The masterplan vision will be underpinned by the creation of a new Adaptable Estate Standard to act as a blueprint for designing the highest quality, flexible healthcare assets. Healthcare is rapidly changing. Traditional healthcare and life science buildings soon become obsolete due to the unpredictability of future technology and demand. Flexibility and future-proofed estates are required to respond to changing needs, new technologies and best practises.

The Adaptable Estate Standard will see the creation of healthcare-standard ‘shell and core’ buildings which house a mix of clinical, research, academic and commercial uses.These carefully designed buildings are likely to be refitted every 10–15 years, depending on changing requirements, treatments, technologies and demand.

These unique spaces will facilitate close collaboration as different sectors from med-tech start-ups to world-leading academic institutions, life science industries to clinical researchers are brought into contact. They will bring together experts who too often work in isolated silos into a single, unique space where researchers, clinicians and academics work together, advancing collaboration, understanding and research.

As the buildings are periodically updated, staff, patients, students and the local community will be given the opportunity to continually provide input to ensure the space works to the benefit of everyone. Patients will gain early access to new treatments and technologies and improvements to care pathways will offer faster diagnosis and treatment, improving patient and staff satisfaction.

All new facilities will be designed with the highest levels of environmental sustainability, promoting low-carbon transport and energy efficiency.