Opening Speech
Peter Bonfield
Building Research Establishment

My name is Peter Bonfield, Chief Executive of BRE, Building Research Establishment and for those who have not heard of us we are the nation’s provider of independent research evidence that supports a better built environment.  I also have a job: I work for the Olympic Delivery Authority and have done so since the beginning and my job there was to co-author the sustainability policy and help delivery and also lead on products.

Both of those roles I hope are relevant today. I am really pleased to have been asked to open the event because what you are all talking about today is an absolute priority for us. For example, on the games, if you go out from Westminster to Stratford, life expectancy decreases every mile you move out of Westminster. Life expectancy in Stratford is about 7 years less than it is in Westminster.  All sorts of issues around poverty, illness and deprivation for people who live out there.

Again a lot of what we have done in the games is to try and focus on the human side of sustainability. We all hear about the environmental side of sustainability but we need to focus on the human side of sustainability and try and great a park, an Olympics and legacy that helps the people as much as it does the planet.

Indeed, if we think about the change we are in at the moment, we are in really a period of halcyon change if you look at a range of matters, such as the climate change, now you can't avoid it, it is an absolute priority. Technology is changing all the time; we have widgets, sensors, scanners, a whole range of advanced technologies that come in, invading our lives, whether our working lives, living, working, how we generate energy.  If you look around the world there is mass reorganisation happening, most of the world's population will soon be living in cities, most of the cities are located round coastlands. That's a big change in dynamic. There's a whole rebalancing of world economies, former countries that were regarding as developing are developing very, very fast and developing faster than we are so there's a big change there. One of the most important changes probably but as yet one that seems to have really built momentum and profile is the one around demographics so there are a whole range of quite scary statistics around this. For example, if you look at just general health and well-being in the developing world, geo based medicines, predictions papers written that say in the western world, the developed world life expectancy by 2015 will be increased at more than year per year, that's a hugely significant statistic.

If we look at the number of people over 65 in the UK, by 2050, it will be 50% of the population, more than double than what it is now.  Massive change.  Many people are familiar with the 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 but this other statistic it more significant. Think about healthcare and how we delivered today 90 million a year spent on the National Health Service, and it may be less when the cuts come through but if we look at how the healthcare is provided it is mostly provided in hospitals when you are already ill or injured or in firm and need treatment.

If we carry on delivering health care in that way we won't be able to cope, we'll need so many doctors, nurses, managers, surgeons and others, we just will not be able to cope so we need to think about it in a totally different way of addressing the health needs of our people. Rather than thinking about spending 95% of the health budget on reactive care in hospitals we need to think about how we turn it completely on its head or at least re, balance it so most of our investment in healthcare is spent literally caring for people in their homes in their local communities, to prevent illness, to prevent accidents and things like that, that we have to treat in hospitals at the moment so that is a totally different dynamic. Already what we are seeing delivered out there in retirement homes and through local health centres and starting to be delivered in normal homes are a whole range of new technologies around health, or telecare.  So telecare is how you would have sensors and things like that and you will learn much more about this later, but how you care for people in homes, telehealth is how you deliver healthcare in homes and the local community.

The rise in long term diseases like lung disease, dementia and diabetes is also on the increase and again set to affect something like 50% of the population not too far away, so how do we deal with that?  Technology as a role to play but some of the work we study at BRE, things like texture and colour for a dementia patient can trigger childhood memories that helps them remember thing they otherwise wouldn't have done so you whole range of not just technological element to consider, not just medicines and medicine care, and all that sort of thing but also the psychology and mental condition of our people, their spirit, their feeling of well-being that will influence this very, very important agenda.
Now, at BRE we are being pretty proactive, we are trying to be very proactive actually, one is with ministers both at UK level and European level and indeed in international level.  I was in the States last week on this very issue because they face similar issues, we are trying to raise the profile and the need to invest and take serious account of the demographic change that's happening, happening right now.

We are also working in partnership with a whole range of technology providers House builders, integrators, local authorities and others to look at what are the best ways of delivering preventative care for people in their homes?  How do we deliver that?  What are the pros and cons for that. What do we do it in a way integrated with energy provision travel services, entertainment and others thing. Increasing lie, my mobile phone is an integrated thing I do lot of from diary, mail, phone, photographs, music, it is altogether. When we are thinking about this issue, demographics, preventative medicine, telecare and telehealth we have to think about how at that point integrate it into normal way, we have a park at BRE where we build zero carbon buildings. We have two buildings, one a poly clinic, the other a house where we are looking to put in assistive living technologies and see how it works. In one of the houses is a lift in there which looks like something out of a hospital.  If you go into our home zone area, there is traffic calming. If you’re blind there is no way of telling where the road starts and the path finishes. Thinking of this is like the HTC controller, how do you work that if you have some infirmity? We have to think about how it fits together and integrate into normal life.

So I think there's lots to do. I think we have a hell of a lot to do actually, we have to really raise our profile, persuade Government to invest in it all of us who have an interested in have to cajole companies, colleagues and organisations to put more effort into it. There's no clear solution to addressing the challenges of demographic change present to us but if we work together, collaborate, do more and do it further and do it faster we can really help move things on.

I hope we might come back in two or three years and this issue the profile has changed. I wish you a really good day, you have a really interesting line up of speakers, a lot of opportunities for learning and networking and a great panel discussion later today where I hope there some good discussion.