SGUH Enterprise

I made a quick visit to Scotland's new state of the art hospital this evening. The £842 million South Glasgow University Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Sick Children is expected to be fully operational by the middle of June.

The building is totally mind blowing, it has been nicknamed "Starship Enterprise" and "Dark Star" due to its futuristic design. This is part of the giant atrium where you can see the brightly coloured office "pods" with windows framed in bright purple, pink, yellow and orange, like enormous building blocks.

The new South Glasgow University Hospital will be one of the biggest campuses in Europe and it will mean a massive shake-up to health services in the city.

It will house a new 1,109-bed adult hospital and a 256-bed children's hospital.

There will also be a two major A&E departments - one for adults and one for children - a maternity hospital and state-of-the-art laboratory services.

Every patient in the general wards in the 14-floor hospital will have their own single room with an en-suite and views out across the campus.

A special lift set aside for emergency patients flown in by helicopter will allow staff to rush their charges straight from the helipad rooftop down to surgery at lightning fast times. Just when I arrived at the hospital a helicopter was taking off from the helipad.

There are 'smart' lifts which save time by not stopping at every floor - and a computer lift guide to tell you which lift will get you to the floor you need the fastest.

The carefully planned out design also allows for swifter transitions between emergency wards, such as Resus or burns units, while underground tunnels allow robots to travel from ward to ward with items such as bed linen, leaving corridors free and unobstructed for getting patients where they need to be when they need to be there.

The project will provide patients with access to services for all ages on a single site - bringing with it increased efficiency, shorter waiting times and better continuity of care.

Up to 10,000 NHS staff will be based at the site when it is fully operational.