Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity
The Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity is an independent, place-based foundation that works with Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and others to improve the health of people in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark.
The Charity wants to support new approaches to health and recognises that great ideas sometimes need space and resource. When it heard that MedCity were appointing consultants to undertake a demand assessment for healthcare related R&D floor space in London it wanted to use that work as a platform to understand better how businesses might value being at or close to the major hospital campuses of Guy’s and St Thomas’. As well as wanting to know about potential demand it wanted to know more about the potential relationship between incubation and ‘grow on’ activity.
Creative Places worked hard to ensure that as it progressed the London-wide demand study for MedCity, focussing on healthcare related R&D, specific questions were asked of businesses around the subjects of collaborative work, co-location, hot-desking and relationship building. We specifically asked businesses about the value in having R&D teams based at or close to leading research intensive hospitals and we explored more fully the range of issues that come to the fore when considering locations for undertaking R&D activity.
The Charity has been able to progress delivery of its Health Foundry project with a better understanding of the context within which this initiative sits; at the same time it has been able to engage with its partner organisations to further advance consideration of wider and more extensive development plans. The Health Foundry is now established as a successful collaborative workspace for people using digital technologies to improve health and wellbeing.
