Members of IHEEM’s Scottish Branch have recently enjoyed two interesting hospital visits.
A party from the Branch recently visited the new Forth Valley Royal (Acute) Hospital in Larbert (HEJ – August 2011), where they were treated to presentations and a tour of the facilities from Maureen Coyle, project director, and Jim Alderton, technical services manager, at NHS Forth Valley; and Tom McEwan, the project manager at Serco, writes Andrew Tweedie, Branch secretary, and senior technical advisor, Decontamination Services, Health Facilities Scotland. The £300 m PFI-funded hospital is the UK’s first healthcare facility with a robotic delivery system for meals, laundry, and clinical waste. Featuring 860 beds, 6 operating theatres, and 4,000 rooms (50% of which are single en suite), it is Scotland’s largest completed healthcare construction project yet. Maureen Coyle explained the threephase introduction of services, which have been designed in such a way that that inpatient facilities, FM services, and public areas, are segregated to optimise care and minimise disturbance to patients. Engineering topics and highlights discussed, meanwhile, included:
• The hospital’s SUDS (sustainable urban drainage system) pond.
• Use of synthetic air.
• Natural ventilation and lighting.
• The facility’s dual fuel system with 100% standby generation (there are three generators within the energy centre).
Maureen Coyle also described the new acute facility’s pharmacy robotics system, which is set up to efficiently undertake labelling, storage, and distribution. The three robot system has enabled a greatly reduced stock level and reduced floor space requirements. Tom McEwan of Serco subsequently gave an outline of the use of automated, laser-guided guided vehicles (AGVs) that, it is planned, will transport surgical supplies, linen, waste, patient food, and materials, around the hospital. The AGVs will read RFID tags attached to each transport cart. Examples of the AGVs moving through a network of underground tunnel systems, into, and out of, dedicated lifts, were shown.
New decontamination unit
In a separate Scottish Branch outing, a number of members toured a new endoscope decontamination unit (EDU) at Perth Royal Infirmary,which is designed to centralise endoscopy decontamination services. The party also viewed the associated plant area and first-floor endoscopy unit. An EDU (as set out in SHPN 13 Part 3 – Decontamination Facilities: Endoscope Decontamination Units 2010) is set up “to reprocess flexible, thermolabile endoscopes and their accessories”. The Perth Royal Infirmary’s new EDU was being commissioned during the tour – which was led by Steve Kite, decontamination clinical lead for NHS Tayside – and is now fully operational. It will supply decontaminated endoscopes to the hospital’s two first-floor treatment rooms, which will be transported between the EDU and the treatment facilities via a “dumb waiter” system. Decontamination equipment includes a height-adjustable, stainless steel threesink unit, three pass-through endoscope washer-disinfectors, and an endoscope storage cabinet. The washer-disinfectors receive reverse osmosis-treated water from a treatment system in the plant room.
