What Aalborg's new hospital shows NHS trusts about timing
Aalborg University Hospital opened in May 2026. When a delegation from Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust visited in September, the most useful lessons were about timing: which decisions about digital coordination have to be made while the building is still being designed.
Two sets of decisions run on different clocks
A trust building a new hospital commissions two things at once: the building and the systems that will run inside it. Estates teams, clinical leads and digital teams make those decisions on separate timelines. The digital side is often specified after the walls are up, when much of what the systems depend on is already fixed.
Denmark started its current round of hospital builds more than a decade ago, so several of its new hospitals have already been through this.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT), which is planning a new North Manchester General Hospital, went to see two of them. On 2 September 2026, the delegation walked the construction site of the New North Zealand Hospital in Hillerød. On 3 September it spent the day at Aalborg University Hospital, almost four months after it opened. One site showed decisions still being made. The other showed what they turn into.
David Bailey, Smart Building Lead for North Manchester General Hospital, was on both days:
The hard part sits where automation meets people
Aalborg moves a lot of its logistics without anyone pushing a trolley. Samples travel by pneumatic tube and conveyor to an automated laboratory, and self-driving trolleys carry goods between departments. Much of the day was spent on how that works.
Whether it works depends on the point where automated logistics meets manual work: a porter's next job, a nurse asking for help, a pump someone needs on the ward in the next ten minutes. That handover has to be designed early, because it's hard to retrofit once departments have moved in.
At Aalborg, Columna Flow coordinates that manual layer. Porters, service staff and clinical staff work from a shared view of tasks, and requests from the wards reach the people who carry them out. During the visit, hospital staff explained in their own words how they use it day to day.
The timing point applies here too. Every Columna Flow module builds on the same record of the hospital's rooms, bays and beds, so decisions about how locations are structured and named belong in the design phase alongside the building itself. Jacob Gade, Sales Director at Systematic, joined the programme to answer questions as they arose:
Aalborg's lessons are still fresh
Aalborg's own leaders ran the day, from the medical director on what he would do differently to the head of technical services and logistics on commissioning and the move into a new building. A professor from Aalborg University looked further ahead at AI, robotics and hospital at home.
The hospital is still moving departments across from its older sites, so some of what staff described is still being worked out. Visiting trusts tend to ask most about that part, because it's the closest thing to a warning they can act on. Søren Pihlkjær Hjortshøj, Medical Director at Aalborg University Hospital, sees the exchange running both ways:
Healthcare Denmark has published its own account of both days, with a photo gallery from the visit.
Healthcare Denmark is a non-profit public-private partnership that connects Danish hospitals, universities, companies and public authorities with international healthcare organisations. It organised this visit, which came out of the webinar series it runs with the NHS New Hospital Programme.
The new Aalborg University Hospital opened in Hospitalsbyen, Aalborg Øst on 12 May 2026. At around 180,000 m² it is North Jutland’s largest building project, with single rooms throughout, automated logistics and a direct connection to Aalborg University’s health sciences building.
Columna Flow is Systematic’s suite for coordinating clinical and service work across a hospital, covering tasks, equipment, patient flow and wayfinding. Allowing less time chasing and more time spent on care.
Would you like to learn more about Columna Flow and see results from other hospitals?
Contact Jacob Gade, Sales Director at Systematic.
With 20 years of experience optimising workflows, Jacob is ready to discuss how Flow can help you optimise hospital workflows across disciplines and departments at your hospital.
Email: jacob.gade@systematic.com