RECENT NEWS

Medical Air Technology (MAT) is mid-way through a major turnkey project at Weston General Hospital in Weston-super-Mare, entailing refurbishment of three ultra clean, and one conventional, operating theatre.

Static Systems Group has created plans for a ‘ground-breaking’ Design and Innovation Centre (D&IC) at its headquarters near Wolverhampton, with the centrepiece a full-size replica four-bed bay based on one of the ProCure 21+ Repeatable Ward designs.

Vernacare claims to be ‘setting new standards in infection prevention’ with its new Vortex+ disposal unit, which uses ‘touchless’ technology to ensure that disposal of patient waste from toileting and washing is entirely hands-free.

FFE has been awarded a UK patent for the ‘innovative new light cancellation technology’ used in its Fireray range of infrared beam smoke detectors.

Well known for its ‘fully IP’ nurse call system, IPiN, Wandsworth Healthcare has launched a new website that offers both an ‘open, easy-to-digest layout’ and simple navigation, and ‘a number of innovative interactive media elements’.

A new building and engineering maintenance services framework, open to all NHS organisations, has ‘gone live’.

The Wolfson Surgical Skills Centre at London’s Royal College of Surgeons – one of the UK’s largest cadaveric procedural training facilities, has been equipped with Karl Storz’s new IMAGE1 SPIES camera platform – designed ‘to optimise the surgeon’s view of challenging anatomical areas during complex surgeries’.

A new product guide revised to categorise the company’s comprehensive range of door closers, window control systems, sliding door fittings, and smoke and heat extraction systems into sections, so that information is easy to find at a glance, has been launched by GEZE UK.

VINCI Park UK has won a new contract with the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust.

B&ES Publications’ newly revised TR37 – Guide to Good Practice – Installation of Combined Heat and Power (CHP), offers a practical overview of CHP for building services engineers, and ‘aims to place the installation requirements in the context of the overall construction process, and enable effective delivery of an efficiently functioning system and building’.

IDEXX, which supplies rapid microbiological test kits for water, says a peer-reviewed pan-European study in The Journal of Water and Health concludes that the IDEXX Pseudalert/ Quanti-Tray method for rapid detection of Pseudomonas aeruginosa produces confirmed results faster than the standard reference ISO 16266 and MoDW Part 8 PACN agar membrane filtration methods, with no further confirmation steps.

Wernick Buildings says it is ‘not unaccustomed to installing healthcare buildings in a tight spot’, but recently received a challenge from Leicester Royal Infirmary that required, at least in terms of modular buildings, ‘nothing short of surgical precision’.

Trumpf Medical, which supplies products ‘designed to improve efficiency, safety, and patient care in the operating room and intensive care settings’, has moved from the Luton base of the company that gave it its name, to the headquarters of Hill-Rom, the group that will ‘shape its future’.

Life safety equipment manufacturer, C-TEC, will unveil what it is dubbing its ‘revolutionary’ new CAST addressable fire alarm system protocol at this month’s Firex International exhibition at London’s ExCeL (taking place from 16 to 18 June).

Electrical safety specialist, Bender UK – which supplies products ranging from UPS and IPS systems to surgical tables, and from clinical pendants to operating room integration systems – is to expand into a new purpose-built corporate headquarters and service centre close to its current head office in Ulverston, South Cumbria.

With hospital bed rails potential ‘hotspots’ for dangerous bacteria, manufacturer Schlosserei Röll is now offering solid antimicrobial copper rails.

It has developed a range of touch surface products for hospitals – including bed rails, IV poles, toilet flushes, door and window fittings, overbed tables and custom products – benefiting from copper’s ‘hygienic properties’, which can reduce microbial contamination ‘by >80%’.

IBI Group has appointed award-winning architect and RIBA client advisor, Wendy de Silva, to head its ‘increasingly successful’ mental health architectural team.

She is rejoining the practice from P+HS, having previously been a partner at the IBI-acquired Nightingale Associates 18 years ago.

Vanguard Healthcare, which operates the world’s largest fleet of mobile healthcare facilities, has appointed a seasoned former NHS employee with Board-level expertise to the new role of business development director.

The NHS has invited expressions of interest from hospitals across England interested in developing new ways of delivering and improving their local acute services.

The aim is ‘to enhance the viability of local hospitals through new formal shared working arrangements between clinical specialists at different hospitals, and to improve efficiency by sharing back office administration and management between different sites’.

Decontamination specialist, AVM Services, has joined forces with MMM Medical Equipment UK to deliver training on all types of sterilisers, washer-disinfectors, and ultrasonic and endoscope washer-disinfectors.

AVM will conduct selected courses at a new purpose-built training facility at MMM Medical Equipment’s UK headquarters in Leeds, all covering the requirements of relevant NHS and European standards, and able to be tailored to suit the level of knowledge already attained at individual sites, or for staff new to decontamination.