Innovation means plenty of choice for specifiers

Dave Palmer, General manager for the UK and Ireland at temperature control specialist, ICS Cool Energy, takes a look at some of the key heating and cooling demands on hospitals and other healthcare facilities, and at how these can be met in a sustainable and efficient way. He also discusses the benefits of temporary hire of heating and cooling equipment – an area in which the company has particular expertise. 

In hospitals and other healthcare facilities, the right temperature, humidity, and air quality are all essential to ensure comfortable and healthy conditions for patients, staff, and visitors. Meanwhile, a constant supply of hygienic hot water is essential for a wealth of hospital functions – from patient bathing to the operation of laundry and sterile services departments. With growing demand to reduce carbon emissions, the healthcare estates and healthcare engineering personnel responsible for ensuring that such parameters are met, however, are simultaneously under pressure to ensure that heating, cooling, and hot water systems are running as efficiently and sustainably as possible. 

Innovation in heating and cooling technology enables such personnel to choose from a wide variety of products and solutions. These include, but are not limited to, large chillers for building temperature control, close temperature control chillers for medical equipment and hospital server rooms, and a fleet of electric, diesel, and gas-fired hire boilers for emergency hot water provision and additional capacity needs. In our view, healthcare estates and healthcare engineering personnel seeking the optimal way to navigate successfully through all the options that the market has to offer should partner and work with industry experts that can bring to bear extensive experience, specifically in the healthcare sector. Such ‘partners’ should have the expertise and experience, as well as the technical knowledge, to provide, say, an NHS Trust or private healthcare provider’s Estates & Facilities team with meaningful advice, as well as to offer a full spectrum of services and solutions – from the design of cooling and heating systems to short and longterm turnkey hire solutions – all bundled together and backed by support from an in-house team of technical applications experts.