FEATURE ARTICLES

An IBI architect explains the thinking behind the NHS England Healthy New Towns programme.

A Bristol-based arts consultancy has commissioned artists to redesign the Bereavement Suite and Sanctuary Space at Bristol Royal Infirmary to provide more solace and comfort to bereaved visitors and relatives as part of a major conversion and extension project.

An effective, well-planned modern sluice or dirty utility room which enables clean and effective human waste disposal and disinfection is key to ensuring excellent hygiene and infection control.

A detailed look at combating the threat posed to building occupants via the infiltration into, and dissemination from, ventilation systems, of microorganisms, and how an innovative UVC technology-based solution can tackle it.

A specialist in offsite construction argues that only with a much greater take-up of this form of building will the Government’s 2025 Construction Industry Targets be met.

A washroom control specialist will soon launch a wireless system designed for the continuous, automatic monitoring of hot and cold water temperatures and water flow events in large pipework systems.

A look – by the chair of IHEEM’s Architecture & Design of the Built Environment Technical Platform, and a highly experienced project manager and Chartered Surveyor – at the intricacies of, and priorities for, effective masterplanning.

Pollie Boyle, senior consultant in Healthcare Planning at Essentia, argues that with current NHS financial pressures making it increasingly difficult to get funding for new-build projects, Trusts need to be looking instead ‘to deliver new models of patient-centred care’.

A project manager at a Dutch engineering, design, and project management consultancy discusses how building design can impact clinical outcomes at specialist treatment centres.

A specialist in the field looks back at the history and development of nurse call systems, and gives its view on the ‘wired versus wireless’ system debate.

Catherine Zeliotis, healthcare leader and senior associate at global healthcare architectural practice, Stantec (pictured), discusses the latest thinking in the design of cancer centres, providing best practice examples from Stantec projects throughout the world.

How a focus on integrated specification at the New Papworth Hospital will ensure that the building fabric will prolong the facility’s service life, reduce maintenance, and enhance build quality.

The development of ever more advanced and ‘flexibly designed’ UVC canopies has enabled their use in a wide range of operating theatres, extending the range of surgeries that can be undertaken there.

Shaun Oakes, managing director at ievo, a north-east England-based manufacturer of biometric fingerprint readers, argues that growing use of biometrics technology can improve security and afford better protection to premises, valuable items, and people, across an ever-busier NHS.

The in-use benefits of patient, staff, and asset tracking technologies are now becoming ever clearer, especially in freeing up more time for care, improving patient flow, and facilitating finding key hospital equipment quickly.

The Asset Performance Team leader at BSRIA discusses her recent work testing isolation room design to enable such spaces’ optimal use for both infectious and immunocompromised patients.

The Estates Maintenance Department at University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust has introduced a Workforce Development Programme to tackle existing skills gaps and ensure strong succession planning.

The inaugural Lord Carter Award, presented at the Hospital Innovations 2017 event in London, went to a Trust which has saved considerable sums, and greatly improved efficiencies, by using RFID tagging to ‘track’ patients, equipment, and staff.

With a significant recent NHS focus on improving mental healthcare provision, this month’s Design in Mental Health 2017 event in Solihull should provide plenty to talk about

A report on the positive results from a recent NHS hospital trial of a point-of-use filter which is reportedly ‘fully reprocessable’, and thus – following use – the filter cartridge and the housing can be decontaminated and re-used.