RECENT NEWS

Over 900 visitors attended the first ever Healthcare Ireland conference and exhibition in Dublin from 23-24 April, with 94% from the Irish Republic, 5% from Northern Ireland and 1% from the mainland UK.

A Belfast health centre incorporating Technal architectural aluminium glazing systems has won its second architectural award.

A £5 million energy efficiency programme, just “switched on” at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust’s Birmingham Heartlands Hospital, is expected to save £688,000 a year, reducing carbon emissions and boosting resources for patient care.

According to RIBA Publishing, publishers of a new book, Changing Hospital Architecture, as “background buildings”, “showing considerable consistency of component parts and key issues around the world”, hospitals “rarely excite passion in mainstream architectural and design culture”.

Fire officers, fire safety and health estates personnel and senior brigade staff at last month’s National Association of Healthcare Fire Officers (NAHFO) 2008 conference (see also p34) expressed surprise that, four months after the Royal Marsden fire (Health Estate Journal – February/March 2008), little has been said by hospital management about the causes.

The Healthcare Commission has launched what it says is the biggest inspection programme ever carried out in English NHS acute Trusts to verify that they are meeting infection control standards.

The “free to members” telephone legal advice service provided by Law Express and established for IHEEM members in 2004 has not been as popular as first envisaged.

Just five months away from the start of this year’s Healthcare Estates Conference and Exhibition, being held from 14-15 October at the Harrogate International Centre, IHEEM says a record number of high quality conference papers have been submitted, while the accompanying exhibition looks all set to be a sell-out.

All IHEEM members are being urged to help increase the Institute’s membership.

Later this year the Institute will be conducting a survey of members’ opinions on matters relating to membership, including member benefits, the educational programme, and Health Estate Journal (HEJ).

Starting to investigate and optimise commercial opportunities for IHEEM is the Institute’s newly-formed Business Development Board.

A special tribute was paid at the recently-held Institute annual general meeting to David Wicks who had set a record as the longest-serving member of IHEEM’s Council, from which he was retiring.

The Engineering Council UK Board has recently agreed to form a working group to discuss and produce a set of best practice guidelines for engineers on sustainability.

The Parliamentary Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee recently held a session to hear evidence relating to its inquiry into engineering.

IHEEM has replaced its Technical Committee with a Technology Platform Committee.

IHEEM will be supporting a Health Service Journal-hosted conference at the Inmarsat conference venue in London’s City Road on 11 September themed “Developing Sustainable Healthcare Buildings”.

IHEEM members need to face significant challenges presenting in healthcare engineering and estate management, and step into high profile strategic roles, Rob Smith, the Institute’s new president, told the IHEEM annual general meeting, held recently in London.

The Healthcare Commission’s latest annual performance assessment of English NHS Trusts, examining the performance of all 391 NHS Trusts in the year to March 31, 2008 against 24 core standards (with 44 parts), reveals that the overall compliance rate declared rose from 94.2% the previous year to 95.7% in 2007/2008.

Nuffield Hospitals, the UK’s largest healthcare charity, is re-branding as Nuffield Health in a move it says reflects its “new vision for healthcare” , and comes in the wake of the biggest programme of change in its 51-year history.

Trusts deemed by the Department of Health to be “failing” could see their management removed and a new management team brought in from other parts of the NHS, NHS Foundation Trusts or the private sector under plans announced by Health Minister Ben Bradshaw to “drive up standards of care and tackle underperformance in our hospitals and primary care Trusts”.