FEATURE ARTICLES

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 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.

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.

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’

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.

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.

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.

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.

A leading independent supplier of process filtration and water treatment products discusses its expertise, and explains how its recent creation of five new business dedicated ‘channnels’ should enhance its business and sales focus to a claimed 4,500 customers – including healthcare engineering teams – across the UK and Europe.

A senior project manager at Essentia Trading reports on the built environment and estates consultancy’s project management of two recently completed contrasting and challenging refurbishment projects involving children’s facilities at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital.

An Authorising Engineer for specialist ventilation and water quality discusses the threats to health, and especially to immunocompromised patients, posed by Cryptococcus, a fungus he believes is not especially well understood in healthcare engineering circles

Eur.Ing David Cooper, MD of UK-based independent lift consultants, LECS (UK), considers what he dubs ‘the heavy load of documentation, legal obligations, and standards to be reached at the varying stages in the lifecycle’ of a lift within the healthcare setting, and ‘when to ease the headache with independent engineering advice’.

Healthcare Facilities Management 2019, a one-day event being held on 12 June in Solihull combining a topical conference with a wide-ranging exhibition, will cover topics ranging from cleaning standards and transport/ car parking in healthcare facilities, to managing food waste, fire safety, and security.

A specialist in the hire and sale of chillers and boiler hire, and the provision of smaller temporary HVAC units, considers some of the key challenges posed by the F-Gas Regulation, and highlights the importance of forward planning when considering the mobilisation of chillers and boilers in healthcare settings.

With its Pseudalert rapid microbiology technology for P. aeruginosa in water supplies now well-established in healthcare, IDEXX Water is now working hard to promote what it says is a ‘highly accurate, sensitive, and specific’ test to identify levels of Legionella pneumophila, with definitive results in just seven days.

Develop Training is celebrating after electricians on its courses achieved a 94 per cent pass rate against the latest national wiring standard.

When it comes to emergency incidents, hospitals and healthcare facilities often provide a safe haven for those in need of critical care. However, such premises are not immune to their own crises, and need to have adequate, well maintained and suitable emergency lighting in place at all times.

Corby-based Creative Ironmongery specialises in ‘designing and creating problem-solving products that save money and deliver exceptional performance, even in the most challenging environments’. It claims to be ‘revolutionising standards in architectural ironmongery’.

When specifying products for healthcare facilities there are a wide range of factors to consider – from eliminating water wastage and cutting utility costs, to reducing maintenance and managing infection control.

A British commercial boiler manufacturer looks at the key considerations for designing ‘safe, reliable, and efficient’ hot water systems for healthcare facilities, and at minimising the major risk factors for the growth and proliferation of harmful waterborne bacteria within them.