RECENT FEATURE ARTICLES
Well-trained staff support good practice
A look at some of the key considerations in ensuring safe preparation and delivery of healthy food to hospital patients.
Getting the most from an adaptable, versatile medium
Steam continues to play an important role in serving the requirements of modern healthcare facilities. Angelo Giambrone, Business Development manager at Spirax Sarco UK, discusses the influence of this versatile medium on our day-to-day living, and explains why the healthcare sector should continue to embrace steam as an integral component of a 21st-century hospital.
Air quality management – part of an ‘holistic approach’
Washroom services provider, Simply Washrooms, discusses how factors including insufficient hand hygiene, difficult-to-clean surfaces, and poor air quality, can lead to the proliferation of harmful bacteria in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.
Business cases must be robust and well-conceived
Conor Ellis, head of Healthcare at Rider Levett Bucknall, discusses the need for robust business cases in winning a share of the dwindling capital ‘pot’ for financing new healthcare schemes.
Advanced 4K theatre design at new Papworth Hospital
In early May this year the new Royal Papworth Hospital opened to patients on its new site on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. A look at the delivery and implementation of a 4K audio-visual system for the new healthcare facility’s state-of-the-art operating theatres.
Design employing a more compassionate architecture
The ageing of the population has highlighted the need for inclusive, enabling societies. Dr Evangelia Chrysikou, a lecturer and the Programme director of the new MSc Healthcare Facilities course at the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, UCL, in London, says considerably more thought must also be given to making the built environment more ‘inclusive’.
Matching power protection to system requirements
Designing power protection components – uninterruptible power systems (UPS), emergency lighting inverters, generators, and isolated power supplies – into a hospital or other healthcare facility’s electrical distribution system can be challenging.
How to deal with the ageing UK NHS infrastructure
A specialist in energy and carbon reduction, infrastructure renewal, operating cost savings, and improved building environments, argues for ‘a logical, pragmatic approach’ in addressing an ageing estate and an increasing critical backlog.
Business continuity planning –its importance underlined
Electrical engineer, Luigi D’Alessio MIHEEM, of engineering consultancy, Eta Projects, explains how a ‘FiveYear Risk Based Condition Report’ can form the cornerstone of a robust business continuity plan to ensure that NHS organisations comply with their duty to have in place continuity arrangements under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
Cutting edge science ‘without compromise’
Architects, Sheppard Robson, have masterminded the internal design of the £167 m Molecular Sciences Research Hub on the Imperial College London’s White City Campus, described by the College as ‘the UK’s most significant scientific development since the Francis Crick Institute’.
Imaginative thinking to ‘futureproof’ buildings
With a particular focus on washroom technology – ‘from handwashing to basin design’, Ideal Standard’s Senior Sector marketing manager, Tony Rheinberg, explores the theme, ‘How can we anticipate the issues of the future, and design for them?’ He argues that, even where capital is scarce, investment in up-to-date technology will pay dividends long term
Tracking temperatures using ‘cloud’ technology
Kevin Belben, Technical Applications manager at water management specialists Cistermiser and Keraflo, discuss ‘the evolution of water temperature monitoring systems’, and how harnessing The Internet of Things is helping to improve patient safety and estate efficiency, and, he claims, offers the potential to save the healthcare sector ‘millions of pounds’ every year.
An uplifting building with a feeling of light and space
Donna Talbot, director of Fundraising and Communications at the Arthur Rank Hospice Charity, and Louise Knights, an associate at LSI Architects, reflect on the challenges of designing a new home for the Hospice in Cambridge.
Integrating nurse call and lighting systems
Integrating nurse call with lighting in the patient environment can have significant benefits for patient safety, wellbeing, and workflow efficiency. Matt Clutton, Mechanical Product Design manager at Static Systems Group, a specialist provider of healthcare communication and bedhead services trunking solutions, explores the latest developments in this field, and discusses the role of lighting in hospital wards.
Training centre’s opening fulfils engineer’s ambition
Conscious that it can be difficult to conduct effective medical gas training on ‘live’ hospital sites, an Authorising Engineer (MGPS), and the founder of medical gas pipeline services specialist, Medical Engineering Systems (MES), has opened his first dedicated training centre in Durham, fully equipped with a range of ‘live’ medical gas equipment.
Making estates more commercial and sustainable
The national head of Healthcare at independent construction, property, and management consultancy, Rider Levett Bucknall, says that despite the Wave Four funding offered last December to NHS Trusts, ‘we are now in an era where there is less real healthcare capital expenditure in the UK’. He believes the clear tenet for all healthcare providers looking ahead will thus be ‘increasing self-reliance for project capital’
Embedding cultural diversity in healthcare design
Burkhard Musselmann, managing principal and healthcare architect at the UK office of architectural practice, Stantec, and Brenda Bush-Moline, an ASHE member who is healthcare design lead and senior principal at the firm’s Chicago office, discuss the need to consider cultural diversity in the healthcare design process, and suggest ways in which this can be achieved.
Automation reducing costs and enhancing quality
Alfredo Andia Ph.D, an Associate Professor at Florida International University in Miami, discusses the growing international use and acceptance of ‘offsite’ in the construction of healthcare facilities.
Facility will boost training and showcase expertise
Keen to showcase its expertise as a supplier of complete turnkey operating theatre solutions, Bender UK has opened a new, purpose-built operating theatre at its Cumbria headquarters, where it can demonstrate its complete range of theatre and clinical equipment.
Converging technologies – a more ‘integrated’ choice
Dave Hewitt, Sales & Marketing director at Courtney Thorne, considers some of the key selection criteria when choosing personal safety alarm systems for healthcare environments housing patients with more complex needs – including assessing the risks that such patients present, and their own particular needs. Increasingly, he explains, technologies from different types of equipment are converging – to the user’s benefit.
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