Fresh Air in Focus: OneDevon Launches Live Air Quality Monitoring

The Solutions Architects team at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, in partnership with Evotech and the Digital Futures Lab at Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, has launched an ambitious 12-month pilot programme to monitor and improve indoor air quality (IAQ) across inpatient elderly care wards in Plymouth, Torbay, and Exeter.

This pioneering initiative aims to gather vital data on the current state of air quality within these hospital environments—data that will help us understand how the air we breathe directly impacts the wellbeing of both patients and staff.

Indoor air quality is increasingly recognised as a critical factor in healthcare settings. Poor air quality can contribute to a range of physical and psychological symptoms, including fatigue, difficulty concentrating, reduced lung function, and respiratory issues. These symptoms don’t just affect how staff perform—they also have the potential to influence how quickly patients recover.

In fact, IAQ may be an overlooked factor contributing to longer patient stays or symptoms that are mistakenly attributed to an underlying health condition rather than the environment itself.

This pilot represents a crucial first step in creating evidence-based, data-driven insights that will inform future solutions, such as air purification and cooling systems, to enhance the healing environment across our hospitals. By improving the quality of air, we’re investing in better outcomes for everyone who walks through our doors.

Ultimately, the findings from this research will feed into the development of a formal academic service evaluation, with the goal of sharing results nationally to support wider improvements across the NHS.