RECENT NEWS

Komfort’s Health & Cleanroom Division manufactures the CX modular wall and doorset system which is a totally flexible and fully relocatable bi-panel partition.

Featured at this years Healthcare Ireland Exhibition is Thomas Montgomery’s latest range of Healthcare Furniture – Ultracare +

A new corporate (Affiliate) category of Institute membership now open to all NHS Trusts offers both an opportunity for more Trust staff to take advantage of the broad range of benefits available to IHEEM members, plus an additional 5% subscription discount for all members employed by the Trust taking up the membership.

With training budgets being tightened across the board, and employers in the health estate and facilities sector looking especially carefully at which training courses most merit their employees’ attendance, IHEEM is putting together a scheme that will see industry-offered training courses that meet its strict criteria Institute-approved for their Continual Professional Development content (CPD).

IHEEM is seeking members’ views, by the end of this month, on a range of designs for new Institute ties and ladies’ scarves. As a way to promote the Institute, the Membership Committee has decided to sponsor the production of a new range of ties for gentlemen and scarves for lady members.

A recent new IHEEM member who, having only joined last autumn, says he is already “highly impressed with what the Institute has to offer” and would recommend suitably qualified individuals get in touch to find out how they can benefit from membership, is estates engineering officer at the Luton & Dunstable NHS Trust Pat McDermott.

When pressure on operating theatres at London’s Royal Brompton Hospital saw the hospital’s design team face the challenge of finding space for a new theatre, bespoke modular healthcare facility contractor MTX Contracts devised a solution.

A pioneering nappy recycling facility to initially serve hospitals and other institutions – reportedly a UK first – is being planned for early next year. Plans for the Tylseley, Birmingham facility have been submitted to Birmingham City Council by Knowaste, a developer of recycling technologies for nappies and other absorbent hygiene products.

A fire at the North West London Hospitals NHS Trust’s Northwick Park Hospital on 11 February, believed to have started in a basement electrical plant room, saw around 170 patients evacuated. The evacuees were placed elsewhere in the hospital, at local primary care facilities, and at the Northwick Park’s sister hospital, Central Middlesex, in Park Royal.

Six cancer patients, whose sperm was lost when the nitrogen in the freezer tanks it was being stored in at Bristol’s Southmead Hospital fell below required levels, have won their claim for damages against the North Bristol NHS Trust.

The effective management of healthcareassociated infections, with a number of presentations promising to unveil new approaches to combating the spread of bacteria such as Clostridium difficile and MRSA, will be the key theme of the Association of Healthcare Cleaning Professionals’ 34th Annual Conference and Exhibition this summer.

Health-related brands looking to communicate with patients, staff and visitors can now exploit what is reportedly the UK’s first ever hospital poster advertising platform. New media owner Lighthouse Advertising has acquired exclusive rights to promote poster campaigns on UK NHS premises.

Senior estates and facilities personnel, including the EFM director at England’s largest NHS Trust, the Welsh Assembly Government’s director of strategy, a top microbiologist, and the chief executive of the Health Estates Agency for Northern Ireland, will be among the key speakers at the 2009 annual conference of IHEEM’s Welsh branch, being held next month in the Welsh capital.

The unstinting efforts of the estates team at Kent’s Medway Maritime Hospital to reduce the hospital’s carbon footprint have been recognised by the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) for the second year running, with the team scooping the award for the “Low Carbon Operator/Manager of the Year” at CIBSE’s 2009 Low Carbon Performance Awards in London.

Eleven operating theatres at a leading South West hospital have been fitted out with a new and unique cable containment system developed to lead the way in the fight against harmful and potentially deadly bugs, providing hospital managers with an additional weapon in their battle against infection.

University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH), one of UK’s largest and most complex NHS Trusts, has signed a seven-year managed service contract with Azzurri Communications for its entire estate of fixed-line and mobile communications across its six hospital sites.

Salisbury District Hospital has won the 2008 Health Business Hospital Security Award for its Salto Systems access control installation.

Southend University Hospital has worked with interior surfaces specialist Altro to create 68 hand gel stations at the hospital, as a highly visible reminder to staff, patients and visitors to “always clean your hands”.

Warrington Hospital’s new £6.25 million intensive care unit has opened to its first patients.

Children at the Leicester Children’s Hospital, at the Leicester Royal Infirmary, are benefiting from a new 528 m2 rooftop play area supplied by Newark-based installer of impact-absorbing surfacing for playgrounds Playtop.