Around the world, a renewal of the infrastructure for healthcare is underway. In the UK over £40bn is being spent on new hospitals and other healthcare facilities. Some estimates suggest that €30-50bn is needed to modernise hospital infrastructure in Germany. Major new investment is planned in eastern Europe and the picture is similar in north America and most of the developing economies. Delivering this ambitious programme poses significant challenges for governments, health providers and industry. These relate to the complex relationships between long lasting infrastructures, rapidly changing technologies and services, and a frequently unstable policy context.

Aim

This conference aims to bring together researchers from across disciplines and countries with different healthcare systems to focus on this issue. We are seeking original thinking on how to improve the planning and delivery of healthcare infrastructures through innovative approaches. We welcome papers which report on research within this general theme. Areas of particular interest include:

 Integrating infrastructure and service planning. Can we translate service planning into infrastructure asset planning more effectively? Are moves towards greater contestability and a local devolution of responsibilities making this harder? What lessons are there from different national health systems? What tools, models and performance metrics are appropriate?

 Stimulating innovation in infrastructure provision. How can procurement and incentivisation models be designed to deliver innovation? Can policy targets be used more effectively? How do we ensure that innovation is embedded on a sustainable basis? How can the design process be more effectively used to generate innovation? How do we capture and diffuse knowledge of innovative solutions?

 Examples of infrastructure innovation targeted at key problems. Healthcare acquired infection is an example of an area where a multi-disciplinary approach embracing service delivery, behavioural and infrastructure change is needed. We are interested in case studies and research reporting on how this has been tackled, as well as the methodological challenges in conducting such research.



Call for papers Deadline for abstract submission 8 September 2008

The organising committee invites abstracts on original unpublished work on any of the conference’s topics, as well as related areas. Successful authors will be offered either a platform (oral) presentation or a poster presentation.

Requirements for abstract submission Abstracts should be approximately 300 words in length. The text should be submitted in MS Word format with a cover page showing the title of the paper, affiliation, and contact details (full address and e-mail) of the corresponding author. No author information should be included on the following page of the abstract. Further guidelines for the preparation and submission of contributed papers and posters will be sent upon their acceptance. The abstract should include details of the methodology, as well as findings and conclusions.

Acceptance Process

1. Abstracts should be submitted by 8 September 2008. They will be blind reviewed by two members of the scientific committee. Acceptances will be notified before 8 October 2008.

2. Authors of accepted abstracts will either be invited to submit a full paper (maximum 5000 words) based on the reviewers’ comments or a poster.

3. Papers should be submitted by 8 December 2008. They will be blind reviewed by two members of the scientific committee. Acceptances will be notified before 15 January 2009.

4. A final version of papers accepted for oral or poster presentation must be submitted by 15 February 2009. At least one of the authors is expected to register for and attend the conference.

Abstracts and papers should be sent to Ana Wheelock.