RECENT NEWS

The largest primary healthcare centre in Britain, the £30 million Aldershot Centre for Health, has been topped out with a final trowel-full of concrete by Professor Jonathan Montgomery, chair of Hampshire Primary Care Trust.

Maris Interiors LLP is to create a 30-bed unit within the London Independent Hospital in Stepney, London, for InCROM (International Clinical Research Organisation for Medicine). The space, which will take 10 weeks to create, will be used by InCROM to conduct stage one clinical trials on volunteers.

The Manchester office of White Young Green (WYG), consultants to the built, natural and social environment, has returned to Aintree Hospital, Liverpool to undertake its second project in two years.

High-speed internet is no longer a luxury for the technologically savvy and is fast becoming a necessity for qualified and student health workers. An essential tool in aiding study and research, internet based technologies can offer a vital connection for overseas workers to their homeland and families, and a data networked infrastructure can even provide digital TV services.

Norwich and London-based LSI Architects has won the design competition for the new Palliative Care East Centre to be built on the James Paget University Hospital (JPUH) site near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. The concept for the new facility, which is intended for completion within three years, was selected above designs from five other short-listed architects as presenting an “outstanding vision” for the project.

The first of a series of new nationwide surgical instrument decontamination “super centres” has opened in Kings Norton, Birmingham.

Sustainability and energy saving were the focus of two IHEEM seminars held in London immediately prior to the Institute’s AGM. James Verrinder reports.

Minutes of the 40th Annual General Meeting held at the Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London, on Tuesday 15 May 2007.

The Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estate Management would like to congratulate the following who had IHEEM grades recently awarded:

Hilditch, the medical equipment auction specialist, has become a company affiliate of IHEEM.

IHEEM’s London Branch is organising a trip to Mercedes-Benz World and the Brooklands Museum in Weybridge, Surrey on 13 June.

Delegates attending this year’s IHEEM Healthcare Estates Conference in Harrogate (16 and 17 October), will be presented with a particularly fine line-up of papers.

Offsite 2007, to be held at BRE in Watford on June 11–14, will explore how modern construction and advanced technologies are coming together to deliver higher performing, more sustainable and smarter buildings.

Documentation creation company SRC has won a European public tender to roll-out a Trust-wide digital dictation and workflow management solution to Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

A new partnership between NHS Direct and the Clinical Knowledge Summaries Service (CKS) will allow GPs and other healthcare professionals to access to patient information from their computers.

A continuous geared hinge/ concealed door closer combination has been used to create a safer, more comfortable environment in a specialist mother and baby unit at St Luke’s hospital in Middlesbrough.

London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has awarded a five-year cleaning contract to MITIE’s Health a nd Hygiene division. A 300 strong team will provide 24 hour cleaning services, 365 days a year to all hospital areas, including wards, consulting rooms and public areas.

The National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) has appointed Martin Fletcher as its new chief executive. Martin Fletcher joins the NPSA from the World Health Organisation (WHO) where he was based in Geneva.

Darent Valley Hospital, part of the Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust, has installed a new Siemens AXIOM Artis dTA and AXIOM Artis dFC, purchased with funds provided by the Strategic Health Authority and Trust, to replace outdated equipment.

North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust is safeguarding the welfare of its community midwives with lone worker support systems from Argyll Telecom.