Sensor-based monitoring paying off at St George’s

Located in Tooting, St George's Hospital dates back over 200 years. It opened its doors as a 60-bed hospital at Hyde Park Corner in 1733, and was rebuilt in 1820, offering over 300 beds. To help meet a growing demand, a new convalescent hospital was eventually built in Wimbledon, and a new medical school, now known as St George's, University of London, was established on the St George's Hospital site in 1868.¹ The University moved to its current site in Tooting in 1976, and was followed by the hospital, which finally closed its Hyde Park Corner site in 1980.

Each year, over 130,000 operations are performed at St George's Hospital on patients from across the South of England in its state-of-the-art operating theatres. It has 31 theatres, including seven cardiac and neurosurgery theatres in its Atkinson Morley Wing. Here, over 4,000 of the most complex neurosurgical and cardiothoracic procedures are undertaken each year.²

Operating theatres are large energy consumers, accounting for a high proportion of hospitals' carbon footprint. According to the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC), they are three to six times more energy-intensive than clinical wards.3 Most theatre energy consumption relates to maintenance, such as of heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC). Meanwhile, lighting and medical equipment such as anaesthetic gas scavenging systems (AGSSs) are also high sources of consumption.