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Dhanes Thomas

Designing Infrastructure to Drive Excellence in Patient Care – The Moorfields Oriel Experience

Quality and safety in health care delivery fundamentally depends on an organisation having a physical infrastructure and operational environment with clinical excellence and optimum staff welfare embedded in its DNA.

Moorfields Eye Hospital is in the process of transferring its central London services to a new custom-built facility, with the aim of bringing together eye care, research, and education in a fully integrated centre to creates an environment in which quality, safety and innovation can flourish. The project, Oriel, is currently at RIBA Stage 4 design and the programme of building work has commenced.

This presentation will describe and discuss:

  • the specific conceptual elements incorporated into the physical design of Oriel to improve and enhance quality and safety, together with the processes undertaken to achieve assurance around these concepts
  • the elements incorporated physically and operationally to mitigate for the impact of the time lapse between design completion and building opening
  • elements of design that futureproof the facility by anticipating and planning for evolution in ophthalmic innovation and service delivery trends.
  • the implementation of an operational programme to prepare services for the transition

About

Dhanes Thomas was appointed as a Consultant Ophthalmologist  Moorfields Eye Hospital in 2010. Dhanes specialises in medical retina, adult and paediatric uveitis and also performs cataract surgery. She is also extensively involved in postgraduate ophthalmic education as a clinical and education supervisor for Moorfields and as a training programme director for the London School of Ophthalmology, Health Education England (HEE).

A  key landmark in her career is her role in the UK Biobank Programme, where she supported  the operations team with the physical and operational infrastructure for the Eye Booth module, which delivered the ocular data for the UKBB consortium.

Dhanes also served as the first Training Programme Director for Advanced Clinical Practice, where the objective was to align the shape of the programme for ACP trainees with the existing HEE programme for Ophthalmology Specialist Trainees. She currently serves as the HEE School of Ophthalmology Lead for the SuppoRTT programme, which provides infrastructure to support career breaks during training thereby enabling long careers and reduceing workforce attrition.

Dhanes was appointed as Clinical Director for Oriel, the relocation of services at the central Moorfields facility to a new custom built facility, in May 2021.