FEATURE ARTICLES

Tackling healthcare-acquired infections needs common sense, a clear pursuit of good hygiene practice, sound product purchasing and the maintenance of a collective responsibility, a specially convened meeting in Staffordshire determined. Nicholas Marshall reports.

A risk management approach to the selection of non-metallic materials used in high pressure medical oxygen systems is discussed by Ben Johnson, product manager at BeaconMedæs.

Off-site manufacture of energy centre systems could help the NHS improve its track record of delivering major projects on time and on budget, argues Murdo MacDonald, major projects manager for Spirax Sarco.

A new cardiac centre at Blackpool’s Victoria Hospital is described as an excellent example of how the ProCure21 process can work.

Patients are being given a choice of where they can be treated, and hospital cleanliness is likely to influence their decision-making process. Increased use of antimicrobial technologies could have major importance in the fight against the spread of bacteria and germs. Trevor Payne reports.

Providing wireless communication solutions at one of the country’s largest mental health facilities is a partnership between South London & Maudsley NHS Trust (SLaM) and Ascom which has been in place for more than 10 years. James Verrinder visited the Bethlem Royal Hospital to see the site’s communication system at work.

Artificially created melatonin-supressing blue light can improve patient outcomes and invigorate healthcare staff. Nicholas Marshall reports.

Falls from ladders and stepladders cause more than 1,000 major injuries a year and around 14 deaths. As a result, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has produced new guidance to help eliminate accidents in the workplace.

In its development of cancer treatment services, Belfast City Hospital Trust has installed a vacuum drainage system for the control and containment of radioactive therapeutic waste.

IHEEM has staged a succession of seminars titled Decontamination: Focus on HTM 01, and James Verrinder reports on the final event in the series. The new HTM 01 on disinfection and sterilisation is the first guidance update for over ten years and is due to be published soon.

Medical speech recognition systems have advanced significantly, and healthcare facility managers need up-to-date knowledge of the latest features and benefits in order to be able to assist with system choice. Health Estate Journal reports on how a company has moved the technology forward.

Charles Barrett, senior surveyor at Oakleaf, describes how new surveying technology helped produce accurate plans of a 19th Century mental health facility.

Health Estate Journal reviews ‘The Way Forward for NHS Health Informatics’, a report by the BCS Health Informatics Forum Strategic Panel on behalf of the British Computer Society (BCS). The report title carries the subsidiary wording ‘Where should NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CfH) go from here?’

Building for Health is a new event taking place at London’s Earls Court 2 from 27 February to March 1. The event is one of five exhibitions being staged under the umbrella title Innovations for the Built Environment – the other shows are Futurebuild, Ecobuild, Cityscape and Regenex.

Plasterboard has become a choice construction material in the healthcare sector because it provides economical solutions for key requirements in modern hospitals, says Spencer Maynard, technical specification manager, Knauf Drywall.

This Health Estate Journal ‘Then and now’ feature describes further thoughts from over 50 years ago on the importance of anti-infection precautions. Published below is a slightly edited version of part two of a paper by A.F. Dence MA (Oxon) which was published in the April 1950 edition of The Hospital Engineer (the official journal of the Institution of Hospital Engineers, now IHEEM). The first part of the paper, which appeared in the January 1950 edition of The Hospital Engineer, was republished, with minor alterations, in the January 2007 edition of Health Estate Journal.

Ensuring that a hospital’s lifts operate safely ranks as one of the most important responsibilities of a health estate manager. Eamonn Reid, sales director at lift technology expert LiftStore, highlights some key issues.

The recently published operating framework for the NHS in England describes priorities for the year ahead – including the tackling of healthcare-associated infections and the driving forward of effective information technology solutions.

Dr K. C. Lam of the Department of Building Services Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, explains how to create and implement a successful maintenance programme.

John Colquhoun, principal, Bassett Kuttner Collins, building services consulting engineers, describes the largest hospital redevelopment project ever undertaken in Victoria, Australia. This article was previously published in The Australian Engineer, the journal of the Institute of Hospital Engineering Australia, and its publication in Health Estate Journal has been facilitated by the International Federation of Hospital Engineering.