FEATURE ARTICLES

In September 2018, the new £200 m Chase Farm Hospital near Enfield opened to become what its operator, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, believes is the NHS’s most advanced digital hospital.

Architect, Richard Mazuch, founder and champion of IBI TH!NK, the IBI Group’s ‘in-house’ research and development group, and an advocate of evidence-based design in ‘creating innovations that positively impact the psychology and physiology of patient groups’, examines the many positive therapeutic benefits – both physical and mental – of ensuring that modern healthcare buildings, and the patients being treated within them, get sufficient sunlight.

Hospitals regularly suffer with high numbers of cars arriving at site, with their drivers wanting to use onsite parking, resulting in a higher demand for car parking spaces than is actually available. Here Simon Bourke, Healthcare Sector lead for global professional services firm, RPS Group, looks at the key considerations, and at some of the key steps in developing an effective Travel Plan, with a focus on the positive outcomes resulting from doing this at two large acute NHS Trusts.

Paul Musgrove, UK Development manager at shower room and washroom specialist, Conti+ UK, discusses some of the many and varied considerations and priorities for estates and facilities teams managing healthcare washroom systems, and outlines some of the recent advances in the field from the company.

Becky Hill, an applied biology and microbiology research scientist who ‘transitioned into the corporate world’ – developing her knowledge skills and expertise in water treatment and purification – before founding performance improvement and strategic advisor company, Solutions 42, outlines her ‘holistic approach and measurable solutions to learning and development interventions in healthcare’.

The Quadram Institute in Norwich is, the facility’s creators say, ‘an exceptional interdisciplinary facility dedicated to food science, gut biology, and health’. Richard Walder, Sector director of Science and Technology (UK) at BuroHappold Engineering, and Nora Claudio Familiar, Project architect at NBBJ, outline the challenges of housing three complex organisations under one roof, and explain how collaboration enabled the project to succeed.

For Eastwood Park, 2019 is more significant than most. This year the long-established training centre celebrates 50 years of delivering specialist engineering, decontamination, and estates and facilities management training. Helen Cornes, senior marketing executive at the Gloucestershire training facility, looks back at its development, and at how its course portfolio has both adapted and expanded over the years, in line with the significant changes in the sector.

Working with UK thermometer manufacturer, TM Electronics UK, hospital estate managers in the States of Guernsey are using ‘practical, low cost temperature strategies’ to speed up and simplify water temperature monitoring across their healthcare estate, as well as to ensure that their hospitals’ water systems comply with the demanding requirements of the Department of Health & Social Care’s HTM 04-01 and the HSE’s ACoP ‘L8’ guidance on the control of Legionella in water systems.

Peter Bellis, managing director of Lancashire-based building services consulting engineers, A P Bellis & Associates, discusses the challenges of a complete refurbishment and refit of of one of the operating theatres at Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal in Cumbria.

In September’s HEJ, the architectural practice that designed the Rutherford Cancer Centre North East in Northumberland, JDDK Architects, discussed some of the key thinking behind the facility’s creation.

Colin Dobbyne MIET, an experienced product designer, and the founder of Big Blue Solutions, says he is ‘passionate about empowering clinicians to make better decisions by connecting operating theatres to create a constant feedback loop for research and development’.

Four Master’s students in Mechanical/Electronic Engineering at the University of Portsmouth have recently undertaken a project looking at ‘excessively high’ noise levels in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Here they report on the findings of their research – which included surveying the public – and highlight a number of potential active and passive control measures to take to make such environments quieter and more ‘calming’.

Mark Jackson, deputy director of Estates, Facilities and IT at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, considers the key benefits he has seen from his experience of implementing DFN Project SEARCH’s innovative training programme across three different Trusts.

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’.