Why insight is still the challenge for the NHS estate

NHS Property Services’ latest guide, Maintaining the NHS Estate, published in July 2026, sets out the scale and complexity of keeping healthcare buildings safe, resilient and sustainable.

The NHS estate costs more than £14 billion a year to run, uses 11.3 billion kWh of energy, and has an estimated 30% of its space not in active use. At the same time, the guide states the maintenance backlog has reached £15.9 billion, with ‘high risk’ repairs accounting for more than £3.5 billion.

One of the most important messages is not simply that the NHS needs more funding, more technology or more data. It is that organisations need to improve the way they turn data into decisions: most facilities management teams have ‘more data than insight’.

More data does not automatically mean better decisions
Hospitals generate large amounts of operational information every day. Maintenance records, condition surveys, Computer Aided Facilities Management systems, building management systems, workforce data and service activity all contribute to a digital picture of the estate.

However, this information is often fragmented across teams and systems. It may be incomplete, out of date or disconnected from the operational context needed to make sense of it. A room may appear fully booked, but remain empty for much of the week. A service may continue to follow a historic schedule even though patterns of demand have changed. A member of staff may be allocated a task based on availability, without knowing whether they are the closest or most appropriate person to respond.

The NHS Property Services guide gives a particularly striking example: rooms formally booked for more than 80% of the week were found to be occupied for less than 20% of that time. Elsewhere, space believed to be fully utilised was operating at just 7% occupancy. The problem here is not an absence of information, it is an absence of reliable, real-time insight.

Operational context turns information into insight
Static reports on past events are valuable for governance and long-term planning, but hospitals also need insight that reflects what is happening in real time; where staff are currently located, which patients are awaiting transfer, where essential equipment is, and which tasks should be prioritised based on clinical and operational need. Without that context, data can describe the hospital without helping teams actively manage it.

The NHS Property Services guide recognises this gap, highlighting how technology and AI can support earlier identification of problems, automation of routine activity and better allocation of specialist time.

From estate data to hospital-wide insight
Navenio helps bridge this gap, by adding an operational layer to the data hospitals already hold. Developed from award-winning University of Oxford research, Navenio uses infrastructure-free indoor location technology to provide real-time, room-level visibility of people, assets and activity across complex hospital environments.

Rather than relying on manual updates, assumptions or disconnected systems, teams can understand how resources are moving through the hospital and use that insight to coordinate work more effectively.

Tasks can be assigned to the right person based on availability and location, patient transfers can be managed more efficiently, and equipment can be found without staff spending time searching corridors and storage areas. Operational leaders can identify patterns, delays and bottlenecks that would otherwise remain hidden.