FEATURE ARTICLES

Effective environmental monitoring of ambient spaces housing everything from a catering operation to wards is key for safe, appropriate conditions in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

A look at some of the key considerations in ensuring safe preparation and delivery of healthy food to hospital patients.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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

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.

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.