RECENT NEWS

The Wandsworth Group has launched a range of blue sockets to comply with NHS Medical Electrical Installation Guidance Notes (MEIGaN).

Omega Flex says its TracPipe stainless steel semi-rigid gas pipe saves up to 75% of the time normally required for a steel or copper pipe installation, and is consequently rapidly becoming ‘the recognised alternative’ to traditional rigid copper or steel pipework installed between meter and appliance.

The British Safety Council’s International Safety Awards 2012 scheme is open for applications. Open to all organisations, the Awards relate to individual sites and business units, allowing organisations to enter as many of both as they wish.

Specialist in clean air, containment, and infection control solutions, Howorth Air Technology, has formed of a new division – Howorth Bio Technology.

A new British Standard for cleanliness in newly installed ductwork ‘marks the end of a potentially damaging source of confusion’, specialist in ductwork contracting, System Hygienics, says. The company says BS EN 15780:2011 Ventilation for buildings – Ductwork – Cleanliness of ventilation systems, ‘clearly defines, for the first time, what is considered acceptably clean’.

A £450,000-plus healthcare project, reportedly England’s largest of its kind, at Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI), has improved the hospital environment for acute elderly care patients suffering from dementia.

Step Communications, the publishers of Health Estate Journal are delighted to announce the re-launch of www.healthestatejournal.com

O2 Health has launched in the UK a new telehealth service, ‘Side by Side’, following a successful trial with NHS Western Isles in Scotland, which demonstrated improved clinician productivity, a 30% reduction in travel costs, and fewer appointment cancellations. A secure software solution, Side by Side enables clinicians to use their office computers to link up electronically and conduct “personal and effective remote patient-clinician consultations”. It incorporates video, audio, and chat functionality, plus a digital whiteboard for on-the-spot diagrams and annotations.

As part of its ongoing relationship with the Northern Skills Institute (NSI) at Hexham General Hospital, OR Networks, now part of Karl Storz Endoscopy UK, has equipped a suite of training rooms with equipment from its OR1 digital video teaching range.
The specially designed ORTV system includes cameras, feeds for endoscopic stacks, audio systems, microphones, and display systems, and serves a dual purpose: running two skills laboratories for hands-on laparoscopic training, and creating a simulated environment for ‘SimMan’, a 75kg ‘plastic patient’ .

Ivan Peredruk, a newly appointed overseas member of the Institute, writes: “I am currently employed as a senior architect with international company KEO, and, since 2010, have been based in Doha, Qatar, where I have been employed, on site, on the construction of the new Sidra Medical Research Centre.

The President, Paul Kingsmore, presided. There were 28 members present. The meeting opened with the President welcoming the members to the meeting, and calling on the CEO to read the Notice of the AGM.

John Constable, IHEEM President from 1981-83, has died, aged 92. Born in September 1919 in Lancashire, his family moved to Dover, where he attended Dover Grammar School.

IHEEM’s Council has agreed that the Institute should continue to have a Chief Executive Officer to lead the organisation, and has now started the recruitment process.

The Institute has issued a ‘Call for proposals’ (see also ‘flyer’ within this issue) for this year’s IHEEM Healthcare Estates event, taking place at Manchester Central from 9-10 October 2012. This follows an email on the subject last month.

IHEEM will hold technical seminars on decontamination, infection and pest control, and water quality, over the next few months, including one in Birmingham next month (there is still time to book).

As IHEEM members will see from the report of the Institute’s 2011 AGM (see page 10), with effect from the beginning of this month, there will be a change to the timescales within which annual subscriptions should be paid.

A grand total of over 2,600 visitors, exhibitor guests, personnel, and delegates, attended November’s Healthcare Estates 2011 exhibition and conference, continuing the increases in attendance seen since the move to Manchester, and representing the highest attendance in the event’s history.

Wardray Premise has supplied bespoke shielded workstations for a new £1.4 million resuscitation unit at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, South West London.

Training centre, Eastwood Park, says it is already receiving considerable interest from managers of sterile services departments in one of its most recent new work-based learning initiatives – an Edexcelaccredited BTEC Certificate in the decontamination of reusable medical instruments.

Leaderflush Shapland doorsets have been specified for Doncaster Royal Infirmary’s new Women’s & Children’s Hospital.