FEATURE ARTICLES

In the latest of our series of articles designed to provide healthcare engineers with sound technical guidance on equipment or technology-related topics, John O’Leary, key account manager at Trend Controls (who in April’s HEJ discussed the benefits of natural ventilation in healthcare settings), explains the functions of a building energy management system (BEMS).

Alberta Health Services in Canada has welcomed an outstanding new facility to its healthcare stable with the emergence of new South Health Campus (SHC) in its Calgary Zone.

Few industry sectors have energy demands quite like healthcare. By definition, many buildings involved in treating the sick and injured need to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Since 1 February this year, under the EU’s Biocidal Products Directive, it has been illegal to sell or use water treatment systems that use elemental copper, a practice employed historically by a significant number of UK healthcare facilities to combat Legionella.

Krista Wood, director of public relations for Colchester East Hants Health Authority in Canada’s Nova Scotia, describes enthusiastically a new 124-bed health centre that opened late last year, which not only has the potential to conserve 44 per cent more energy than a ‘traditional’ hospital, but is also better equipped, and almost a third bigger, than the facility it replaces.

Krista Wood, director of public relations for Colchester East Hants Health Authority in Canada’s Nova Scotia, describes enthusiastically a new 124-bed health centre that opened late last year, which not only has the potential to conserve 44 per cent more energy than a ‘traditional’ hospital, but is also better equipped, and almost a third bigger, than the facility it replaces.

Although (the Department for Communities and Local Government’s ‘Fire statistics’ reveal) the number of such incidents has fallen every year since 2006/07, UK fire and rescue services still attended over 312,400 ‘false fire alarms,’ i.e. instances where, on arriving at a site, they found no fire, in 2011/12.

While the UK has an enviable safety record in the management of medical gas systems, it is only via strict adherence to the four tenets – ‘continuity, adequacy, identity, and quality’ – embodied within Health Technical Memorandum 02-01: 2006 – ‘Medical Gas Pipeline Systems’ (MGPS) that we can be certain that patients will not be harmed by these systems.

A recent King’s Fund report, ‘Developing Supportive Design for People with Dementia’,1 describes the positive outcomes of 26 projects completed by 23 NHS Trusts across England under a Department of Health-funded programme, all of which set out to improve the care environment for people with dementia in hospital.

Making sure that a healthcare establishment has a good supply of clean fresh air is an important factor in keeping patients, staff, and visitors, free from the negative effects of CO2 and other contaminants.

‘Every defect is a treasure, if the company can uncover its cause and work to prevent it across the corporation’ – Kiichiro Toyoda, founder, Toyota. This quote, as true in healthcare as it in the manufacturing sphere, set the tone for discussion at a recent Dublin conference, which examined the thorny issue of whether compliance is really enough to ensure safety.

Next month (14-15 May) will see staged at Birmingham’s National Motorcycle Museum the first in a planned new series of Design in Mental Health Conference and Exhibition events.

Over the past few years medical air and vacuum have seen a number of significant innovations. The major benefit to the estates and facilities manager has been to open up new avenues for reducing energy costs.

Professor Branka Dimitrijevic, director of CIC Start Online, a project funded by the Scottish Government and European Regional Development Fund combining the resources of seven Scottish universities that aims to embed sustainable building design and refurbishment into practice, reports on a conference jointly staged in Glasgow recently by the organisation and Health Facilities Scotland that considered this topical issue in some depth.

On the 50th anniversary of the development of his ground-breaking hip replacement surgical technique, Amanda Parkin, communications consultant with clean air technology specialist, Howorth Air Technology, examines Professor Sir John Charnley’s influence on orthopaedic surgery.

An IHEEM-supported conference staged recently at Salford University by the University’s Dementia Design Group (HEJ – November 2012), examined the impact that different hospital environments have on people with dementia.

As the dissolution of the PCTs draws closer, and the assets and buildings formerly owned by them transfer, at the start of April, to the new NHS Property Services Company (see also HEJ – February 2013), there remains a considerable amount to be done by those involved in the real estate aspects of the NHS reorganisation.

With its trainers possessing some of the UK’s leading expertise in the design and operation of medical gas systems – a number having worked in the field since the early 1970s – specialist medical gas training provider and consultancy, MGPS Services, offers its wide range of courses today from what it believes to be the UK’s best-equipped training facility for all working with, or responsible for, the safe and efficient operation of medical gas pipeline systems.

Last month’s HEJ featured an article, the second in our new series of guidance pieces aimed principally at Technician-level engineers, highlighting some of the key steps that boiler operators can take to maximise system performance and efficiency, and thus reduce running both costs and carbon footprint.

The Department of Health (DH) has released a revised and updated version of its NHS Premises Assurance Model (NHS PAM), a software-based tool originally launched in 2010 to enable estates and facilities managers to more easily gauge the overall ‘condition’ of their built estate, provide premises assurance to their management Boards using a nationally consistent technique, assure commissioners that healthcare is being delivered from high quality, ‘clean, safe, and suitable’ premises, and identify the priority areas for improving premises infrastructure efficiency and quality.