The new pop-up diagnostic hub will be set up at Brent Cross shopping centre in North London to help alleviate the NHS backlog of people waiting for ophthalmology appointments.
The trial clinic is in collaboration with UCL and aims to offer patients a local alternative for diagnostic eye care rather than inviting them into the hospital.
Louisa Wickham, medical director at Moorfields, said: “As well as providing an innovative new way to assess and monitor patient’s eyes, we hope the research work at Brent Cross will allow us to see even more patients. As diagnostic hubs are adopted more widely across the NHS, this has the potential to help the NHS to reduce waiting lists.”
The new clinic is being led by Professor Paul Foster (NIHR Biomedical Research Centre [BRC] at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and UCL Institute of Ophthalmology), as part of a new NIHR-supported research project, aimed at enhancing the future delivery of UK and global healthcare.
Professor Foster said: “This important innovative eye clinic, builds on the decade of research that led to the earlier Moorfields’ diagnostic hubs.
“Through rigorous research, patient feedback and expert evaluation, we aim to provide data on how to create outpatient diagnostic hubs that are user-friendly, time efficient and socially distanced. This work will help define the principles that will shape healthcare in the UK and globally for the next 50 years.”
Architects and scientists from UCL will reconfigure the clinic over the next few months by changing the moveable ‘smart’ walls and floating electrical ‘umbilical cords’ in order to establish the most time-efficient and cost-effective layout for patient optimisation.
Mobile diagnostic hubs like this could be deployed on demand in future for other areas of health such as cancer and cardiac screening.
The project aims to pioneer a new way of providing healthcare and providing quality patient care. Patients can go through a series of tests within 45 minutes or less with their results being posted to them once a consultant has reviewed them online.
Dr Hari Jayaram, NIHR Moorfields BRC, added: “For this unique study, we have the benefit of architects, healthcare researchers and operational experts, to help us trial and test a new generation of outpatient clinics.
“We hope this bespoke design will end the need for waiting rooms, further reduce the time patients spend in a clinic, while also building in social distancing measures.
“The hubs’ movable, flexible and sustainable nature also means they could be rapidly deployed and expanded to help to reduce ongoing NHS backlogs and boost capacity in the event of a future pandemic.”
