27th April 2015

South Glasgow University Hospital takes its first patients

“It has been nicknamed the ‘Death Star’ by locals because of its imposing 14-storey star-shaped design, topped by a landing pad for aircraft,” said the BBC on 27 April 2015 when South Glasgow University Hospital, one of Europe’s largest critical care complexes, opened its doors for the first time.

Officially called the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, it cost £1bn to build and equip and was constructed on such a scale to accommodate the patients and 10,000 employees from several other nearby hospitals. These were the Western, Victoria and Royal Infirmaries, and Royal Hospital for Sick Children, as well as some departments from Gartnavel General Hospital.

Brownfield site

It was built on the site of the former Southern General Hospital and largely did away with communal wards, with most in-patients instead accommodated in individual en-suite rooms. As well as its own bathroom, each room also has free television, radio and wireless Internet.

There’s a separate 250-bed Royal Hospital for Children on-site, with a roof garden, and individual emergency departments for each.

A fleet of 26 low-level robots, each of which cost £50,000, were installed to act as porters, automatically moving equipment, food and waste – but not patients – around the vast site. The robots have their own dedicated lifts in the complex and automatically return to their charging stations so they will always be ready for use.