FEATURE ARTICLES

A new MRI and CT scanning unit at Winchester’s Royal Hampshire County Hospital, run by the Hampshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, has been officially opened by the city’s MP, Steven Brine, having been completed in February by Brymor Contractors, under advice from TKL Architects, to replace a former imaging facility badly damaged by a fire in December 2011.

The bacteria responsible for healthcare-associated infections can survive for anything from days to weeks on the fabricated surfaces, typically made from stainless steel and polymeric materials, that surround patients in our hospitals.

Energy usage – particularly electricity – in hospitals is a hot topic, and the sector is under increasing pressure to reduce load and carbon emissions.

Kalpesh Shah, Healthcare product manager – Renal, ELGA Process Water, explains how a water treatment and purification system installed by the company as part of the recent £19 m refurbishment of the Cossham Memorial Hospital in Bristol is providing a constant supply of Renal Association-compliant water to a new dialysis unit, and saving the facility’s operator significant sums annually in the process.

Data destruction and IT asset disposal are heavily regulated and complex areas, especially within the NHS, which is responsible for the safekeeping of extremely personal data on millions of UK citizens.

Research at Aberdeen’s Robert Gordon University has identified the requirement for the development of a ‘Decision Support Model’ to ‘facilitate and measure the selection of main elements and sub-elements within refurbishment and maintenance projects’.

Refurbishments are becoming increasingly common across the NHS, but planning and delivering construction projects in live medical environments with the minimum of disruption to patients, staff, and visitors, is no mean feat, as Richard Hall, a director at integrated property services and project delivery specialist, Styles&Wood, explains.

Hospitals and healthcare facilities use a variety of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) equipment for a wide range of applications. Here, in our latest technical guidance article, presented in a ‘Question and Answer’-type format, Adam Spolnik, director, and Richard Metcalfe, sales director, of temperature control specialist, ICS Cool Energy, focus on some of the key priorities, maintenance-wise, to get the optimum performance from chillers and HVAC components, and identify the units that perform best for particular healthcare applications.

Simon Corben, business development director at Capita Symonds’ Health team, examines how ‘clever use of zoning’ when planning new healthcare facilities could improve hospital design, increase inherent flexibility, and reduce lifetime costs, and argues that a ‘loose-fit, non-bespoke approach’ to space planning will lead to ‘more flexible buildings that are suitable for conversion to alternative uses’.

In March 2013, the Department of Health (DH), in partnership with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Department of Transport, produced an updated version of Health Technical Memorandum 07-01 (HTM 07-01), fully supported by the Environment Agency (EA), the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), and the devolved administrations.

HEJ reports on next month’s Healthcare Estates 2013 conference and exhibition in Manchester, focusing on some of the key topics set to be discussed throughout a packed two-day programme at this year’s flagship IHEEM annual event, and highlights some of the main show features.

According to Betts Envirometal, experts in precious metal recovery from waste streams, and a provider of ‘total waste management’ solutions, ‘disposing of hospital wastes isn’t usually a glamorous subject, unless, of course, you know how to make money from it’.

In a slightly adapted version of article first published in the IFHE (International Federation of Hospital Engineering) Digest 2012.

According to architect, Ana Maria Silva Mejia, ‘a new era for the design of hospitals in Guatemala has arrived’, with a considerable growth in interest around good healthcare facility design.

In June’s HEJ we reported on the first ‘half’ of a recent IHEEM roundtable held in Manchester in conjunction with an expert panel that included Department of Health representatives, and members of the working group that developed it, discussing the latest, ‘revised and updated’ NHS Premises Assurance Model.

In the latest of a series of technical guidance articles to be published in HEJ this year, Tom Welland, conformance and regulatory affairs manager at fire safety product and system specialist, Fireco.

While healthcare estates and facilities teams NHS-wide are acutely aware of the need to reduce their facilities’ carbon footprint, obtaining the necessary funding to undertake the substantial improvements to buildings, plant, and equipment, that may, in many cases, be essential to achieving this goal, will remain a challenge for many Trusts for some time to come.

Conference topics at the Design in Mental Health Conference & Exhibition 2013 at Birmingham’s National Motorcycle Museum in mid-May ranged from how to develop supportive design for dementia sufferers, to a new Dutch ‘High Care Unit’ pilot facility in Eindhoven incorporating multisensory elements from Philips Healthcare.

Susan Pearson BSc, a freelance journalist and communications consultant specialising in medicine and the environment (see also HEJ – April 2013), reports on discussions, at a recent educational seminar, on a pilot project undertaken by the Environmental Microbiology Unit at the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust.

According to Alan Hambidge, who has over 22 years’ experience in health and safety risk management, and is an expert in legionellosis and water hygiene, ‘recent developments and research’ have resulted in ‘an increase in the Health and Safety Executive’s expectations’ on the standards adopted by healthcare organisations in looking after their water systems.