RECENT NEWS

IHEEM has taken the strategic decision to ‘review and revitalise’ its annual awards scheme to give the whole of the healthcare supply chain – rather than just the Institute’s members – the opportunity to participate.

A combination of seven plenary sessions and 24 stream sessions will offer attendees at this year’s Healthcare Estates annual conference in Manchester with ‘an unrivalled range and depth of content’, according to the conference’s organisers, i2i Events Group.

IHEEM’s newly appointed CEO, Julian Amey, says his priorities include broadening the Institute’s membership, further raising its profile and influence, building on its sound relationships with other engineering institutions and trade bodies, and developing its role as a high quality education and information provider to healthcare estates management and engineering professionals.

Will Beck, the High Wycombe-based furniture manufacturer, has launched an attractively finished patient chair designed specifically for healthcare applications which incorporates antimicrobial fabric, has features that make it quick and easy to clean, and is manufactured using traditional joinery methods to maximise its longevity.

Healthcare estates managers are proving to be highly receptive to a new programme of behavioural training that places participants ‘into bespoke situations that relate directly to the their day-to-day working environment’. Develop Training launched its MaTE (Managing a Technical Environment) behavioural training into the healthcare sector at London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital, and is rolling it out to estates and facilities managers via ‘taster’ days.

Real Asset Management (RAM) is urging organisations such as NHS Trusts with ‘underperforming’ estates helpdesk and maintenance management software systems that require a more effective and efficient means of tracking their property and equipment assets to switch to its own ‘easy-to-use’ software system.

A new Eastwood Park one-day course, set to run from next month, will assist estates and facilities managers and electrical contractors with the requirements of the latest BS 7671 Electrical Installation Condition Report (EICR).

Ingenieur Hospital Schweiz, the Swiss hospital engineering organisation, and organiser of the event, is calling for papers by 1 May this year for the IFHE (International Federation of Hospital Engineering) Europe’s 5th European Conference in Bern, which will take place in the Swiss city in 2013.

Existing and potential readers of HEJ can now log onto the magazine’s website (www.healthestatejournal.com) and register to read each issue, complete, in digital form, at a time and place convenient to them.

Carbon reduction specialist, Sustain, says its latest research indicates that the NHS could save between £100 m and £150 m annually by cutting its utility bills.

Mott MacDonald has been appointed as lenders’ technical advisor by the YDA and INSO joint venture – consisting of YDA Insaat Sanayi Ticaret A.S., and Inso Sistemi Per Le Infrastrutture Sociali S.P.A Is Ortakligi – for the development of the e440 million Kayseri Integrated Health Campus in Kayseri, Turkey.

A centre that will promote environmental improvements and undertake research into reducing the impact of the built environment was officially launched on 29 March by Leeds Metropolitan University.

Off-site construction specialist, Yorkon, has been awarded a four-year framework agreement by the Government Procurement Service for the supply of bespoke modular buildings across the public sector, including to the healthcare sector.

Static Systems’ Fusion-IP healthcare communication system now includes a ‘simple, highly cost-effective’, patient entertainment solution for hospital wards.

Developer of surveillance and security solutions, MEL Secure Systems, has introduced a range of battery tube solutions for overt and covert CCTV and ANPR applications.

A Vanguard-supplied mobile operating theatre and adjoining ward deployed at an outreach facility at Harrow’s Northwick Park Hospital, one of the main satellite sites of London’s famous Moorfields Eye Hospital, is enabling the Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to continue treating NHS ophthalmic patients while a major refurbishment project continues to turn two floors of the building into a Moorfields day surgery centre.

The Estates and Facilities Department at the University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust won the Award for the Best Initiative by a Public or Uniformed Service at the recent 2012 Climate Week Awards, held at London’s Lancaster House.

The British Safety Council has launched an e-learning version of its well-established ‘IOSH Working Safely’ course – ‘designed to provide people at any level, in any sector, with a sound grounding in the essentials of health and safety’.

Brandon Medical has won €1 million of research funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme, which it will use to lead a collaborative research consortium to develop future solid state lighting technologies for healthcare buildings.

Two new laparoscopic paediatric operating theatres at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital have been equipped with Karl Storz Endoscopy’s latest integrated theatre system – the Karl Storz OR1 NEO.