RECENT NEWS

Hospitals across England will benefit from £700 m overall to expand wards, install modular theatres, and upgrade outpatient spaces and MRI and screening technology, to help reduce waiting lists, the Department of Health & Social Care has announced.

Zumtobel Group, with its lighting brands, Zumtobel, Thorn, and acdc Lighting, has organised and supplied the concept and design, and supplied the lighting and controls for, a new Critical Care Unit (CCU) at London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

Secure I.T. Environments, a UK design and build specialist for modular, containerised, and micro data centres, has handed over its latest ModCel containerised data centre to Norfolk & Norwich University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (NNUH).

Barry McCurdy (pictured right), formerly Finance Director at Medical Air Technology, has taken over as Managing Director from Steve Stott (left), who has decided to ‘step back a little’ after 13 years at the helm, and becomes chairman.

MTX, which previously delivered an A&E extension and additional office space at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King’s Lynn, has won a further contract from Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Foundation Trust to build it a new endoscopy unit.

A new campaign to tackle work-related rights within the construction industry is launched this month (November), as experts say they fear ‘workers’ rights are being dismissed’.

The £250,000 Wolfson Economics Prize 2021 has been awarded to Ab Rogers Design and its ‘Living Systems’ submission at a gala dinner in London.

As part of an ongoing commitment to reducing its carbon emissions, Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has upgraded the flat roofing over its original Community Hospital buildings with insulation and photovoltaic panels.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust says it has set an ambition ‘to meet new standards for greener and more sustainable hospitals in the UK’, as part of its ‘Hospitals of the Future’, which will see the two new ‘state-of-the-art’ hospitals built.

NG Bailey’s Engineering division has secured a second contract to support the ongoing expansion of NHS Golden Jubilee in Clydebank in Scotland.

MBH Corporation, a ‘diversified investment holding company’, has agreed terms for the acquisition of Somerset-based Approved Air, which provides validation/verification testing of medical facilities to ensure HTM compliance.

MTX, the Modern Methods of Construction building specialist, describes its new FLEX Full-Service Lease Extensions service as ‘a rapid solution to increase clinical capacity which is both flexible and accessible’.

Agilisys, the ‘digital transformation’ specialist for the public sector, has announced the appointment of Claire Darbyshire as head of its Social Care and Health Technology Practice.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust says it has become the UK's first NHS hospital Trust to officially become’ Carbon Literate’, allowing it ‘to take an important step towards its goal of becoming one of the UK’s greenest NHS Trusts’.

A mobile cancer care unit which can be extended hydraulically from its sides to create two consultation rooms has been launched and is being used to provide treatment to patients in the West Yorkshire.

A Glasgow-based company is producing a ‘pioneering’ hygienic door handle which it says ‘eliminates bugs within seconds, reducing the cross-transmission of infectious bacteria and viruses’.

The Engineering Council, the regulatory body for the engineering profession in the UK, has issued updated Guidance on Risk for the engineering profession, which it says it is suitable for engineering professionals ‘at all career stages'.

Independent air movement specialist, Gilberts Blackpool, has published research into the most ‘effective, healthy way’ to ventilate in operating theatres.

In an Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021 speech to Parliament today (Wednesday 27 October), Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, noted that investment was growing, public services were improving, public finances were ‘stabilising’, and wages were rising.

A partnership to help NHS Trusts develop and implement their decarbonisation strategies has been launched, as senior NHS leaders say that decarbonising the NHS estate is ‘fundamentally not complex’, but that more data and greater guidance are needed.