The government’s £37bn New Hospital Programme (NHP) is one of the UK’s most ambitious infrastructure programmes, aiming to create a new generation of state-of-the-art hospitals through successive five-year waves. With contractors now appointed to the first tranche of projects, delivery is beginning to accelerate.

At the heart of the programme sits Hospital 2.0: a model built around up to 80% standardisation to improve speed, cost efficiency, and quality across the NHS estate. But as momentum grows, an important question is coming into focus: where does the human experience sit within this system?

For us at Perkins&Will, the answer is not hidden in what has been standardised—but in the remaining 20%. This is not leftover space or architectural decoration. It is where hospitals become places that people can understand, navigate, and feel comfortable in—and with a human-centred design approach to these spaces, we can demonstrate that standardisation and individuality are not in conflict, rather, they strengthen one another.