Better health through better infrastructure

Welcome to HaCIRIC’s 2009 Progress Report. Better Health through Better Infrastructure offers a chance to reflect on both the achievements of our short history and on the strategy for going forward. The Centre is now in its third year since foundation. In that time, we have taken enormous strides and have begun to fulfill the imagination and foresight of our funders. We are starting to make a real, measurable impact on the health and care sectors and their supply chains. We have also grown to understand much better the main issues facing our stakeholders and to fashion four key areas upon which to focus our future activity. HaCIRIC, as Patricia Leahy of the National Audit Office says, is ‘bringing innovative, rigorous analysis to the field’. She highlights the useful outputs that are now emerging from all the universities involved. Our mission – to improve health outcomes through innovative thinking about infrastructure – is bold and creative. It is helping, as Professor Duane Passman of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, suggests, ‘to take us back to being world class researchers in infrastructure and the built environment’. This goal is absolutely right for the times, as governments all over the world struggle to create greater value out of tighter budgets. As is clear from this report, HaCIRIC understands the real needs of the sector. It has created the capacity, the vision and the drive to deliver what is needed.