FEATURE ARTICLES

Keeping the water supply safe is an integral part of hospital hygiene and infection prevention. To minimise contamination risks, explains Julie Spinks, managing director of WRAS, healthcare estates teams need to be fully aware of their regulatory responsibilities, rigorously apply risk management, use compliant products, and employ approved contractors.

A significant number of critical healthcare applications rely on precise temperature control – from theatres and wards to MRI scanners and even mortuaries. If disaster strikes and a temperature control system fails, being able to rely on a pre-arranged contingency plan for both chillers and boilers can be the difference between hours and weeks of downtime. Russ Baker, director UK – Hire, at ICS Cool Energy, explains.

Lawrence Crompton and Chris More of Siemens, and Regional Partner at DSSR, Derek Jolley, describe a project to replace the electrical emergency power system at a large acute hospital.

With IHEEM celebrating its 75th Anniversary this year, HEJ editor, Jonathan Baillie, looks back at the Institute’s beginnings, its early and continuing goals, and some of the key milestones in its history, beginning with the first meeting at City Hospital Nottingham in August 1943. He draws on a variety of interesting archive material recently uncovered by members of the head office team.

Wandsworth Group claims ‘unrivalled expertise in the healthcare sector, with over 60 years’ experience supplying to the UK and overseas healthcare markets’.

Regular refurbishment of operating theatres is key to ensuring a truly fitfor-purpose 21st century surgical environment, yet estates teams must balance the need for periods of theatre closure with maintaining operational delivery and minimising disruption to patient flow.

At last October’s Healthcare Estates 2017 conference, Dr Aoife Hunt, a managing consultant and hospital evacuation specialist at people movement consultancy, Movement Strategies, explained how using ‘people flow’ data and analytics can help to optimise fire evacuation procedures in healthcare premises.

With the NHS under increasing pressure to provide an ever improved level of service, there are plans for 7,500 existing GP practices in the UK to become 1,500 ‘Super Practices’. A specialist in the healthcare property market explains some of the issues the NHS will have to contend with.

With the NHS under increasing pressure to provide an ever improved level of service, there are plans for 7,500 existing GP practices in the UK to become 1,500 ‘Super Practices’. So what does the future hold for primary care services in the UK, and what issues need to be overcome from a logistical and estates standpoint? Adam Thompson, director at Primary Care Surveyors, specialists in the healthcare property market, investigates, and explains the issues with which the NHS and GPs will have to contend.

Lauren Whitty, marketing manager at Medicare Systems, discusses some of the features and capabilities of modern nurse call systems – the functionality of which now extends well beyond their original purpose, explains what to look for when considering purchasing one, and looks ahead to what new features we can expect to be incorporated in the future.

The head of Health at a leading project and cost management consultancy offers his standpoint on some of the reasons for Carillion’s recent collapse, and the potential wider implications for healthcare construction and construction procurement.

Speaking at an IHEEM seminar, Christina Bradley, Laboratory manager at the Hospital Infection Research Laboratory at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham, discussed ensuring that the final rinse water used in washer-disinfectors is kept safe and, as far as possible, bacteria-free, to protect patients undergoing endoscopic procedures against infection.

Last November one of three IHEEM Honorary Fellowships conferred at a ceremony in London went to ‘third generation’ member, Jeff Jackson, whose father and grandfather were also both members, his grandfather having joined the forerunner to today’s Institute just four years after its formation, and before the founding of the NHS. He tells the family’s story.

A microbiologist says that such are the abilities of today’s rapid testing technologies that ‘in-house’ microbiological monitoring and testing of hospital water systems should be within the compass of many sufficiently resourced NHS healthcare engineering teams.

Despite the devices’ widespread use, many leading industry experts maintain that there is a substantial knowledge gap spanning the specification, use, and management, of point-of-use (POU filters). Water hygiene specialist, Aqua free, says it is ‘tackling this head on’.

How medical gas technology has developed to meet changing demands, and some of the practical and financial challenges when specifying and maintaining such equipment – including the dilemma as to whether to continue maintaining functioning existing plant or to upgrade or replace it.

Guy Barlow, joint managing director of architecture and interior design practice, The Manser Practice, describes the firm’s work on a new cancer unit at Chesterfield Royal Hospital designed to bring fragmented services together into an integrated cancer care facility.

Farrans Construction’s building of a new £36 million inpatient ward complex, the new North Wing, at Londonderry’s Altnagelvin Area Hospital, marks the continuation of a successful partnership between the contactor, its design and supply team, and the facility’s operator, theWestern Health and Social Care Trust.

The second of our IFHE articles this month takes a look at a project to create a new medical clinic for the 3,000-strong workforce of one of the world’s largest coal reserves, in Mozambique. Two of the key medical priorities will be lung health and hearing.

Architects Ernesto González Nagel and João Athayde e Melo describe the design of a clinic built close to the site of one of the world’s largest coal reserves in Mozambique. They explain that the goal was to create a sustainable clinical space with its own healthy microclimate to provide first-class care in specialisms including lung health and audiology for the mine’s 3,000-strong workforce.