FEATURE ARTICLES

The Institute of Healthcare Engineering and Estate Management must move forward determinedly if the latest opportunities are to be seized. Phil Nedin, IHEEM’s new president, answers questions posed by Health Estate Journal about the way ahead.

In October 2005 in northern Pakistan a devastating earthquake destroyed buildings and killed thousands, yet left Kunhar Christian Hospital remarkably still standing. Health Estate Journal reports on efforts to maintain healthcare delivery under extraordinary circumstances.

Ipswich Hospital’s traditional kitchen prepared hot meals for patients twice a day but the healthcare facility’s unusual layout often meant that meals arrived with patients some time after the food had been cooked. Ipswich Hospital wanted to improve its service to patients and called in support services company OCS.

In developing new primary care facilities, a specialised partnership approach is essential, the One Medical organisation finds.

A major step forward in the area of medical imaging has been taken by the largest NHS Trust in Wales.

Health Estate Journal reports on the work of Asset Skills, the Sector Skills Council whose aim is to raise productivity by driving up standards and skills in the facilities management sector by ensuring employer input into qualifications and training.

Neville Mitchell, managing director of Thermal Detection, examines issues relating to accurate temperature measurement with medical autoclaves.

The Royal Academy of Engineering has led a concerted effort to reach agreement on the high-level ethical principles it believes all professional engineers and related bodies should subscribe to. It has also suggested how ethics should be incorporated within the curriculum of undergraduate engineering courses. Anthony Eades, the manager of Engineering Projects at the Academy, introduces these initiatives.

As methods of decontaminating equipment used for gastrointestinal endoscopy continue to be closely scrutinised, Health Estate Journal summarises the latest British Society of Gastroenterology guidelines.

The British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) guidelines on decontamination of equipment for gastrointestinal endoscopy have been updated.

A document titled A risk-based methodology for establishing and managing backlog and published by The Stationery Office puts forward best practice advice, and, for this HEJ article, extracts of the contents have been adapted.

It is essential that the physical condition of the NHS estate is accurately assessed and maintained to ensure it is fit for purpose and safe for patients and staff.

‘Audit’ and ‘screen’ techniques are highly valuable in the good management of asbestos, says Alan Hambidge, director and principal consultant of controls-assurance.co.uk

The management of asbestos within an organisation responsible for a large and diverse property portfolio may seem daunting.

Patient choice is set to have a major impact on the future estates’ strategy of acute hospitals in the UK, says Chris Parsons, senior consultant with property consultancy EC Harris LLP.

The current NHS reforms will mean that patients will be offered the choice of which acute hospitals they attend for follow up treatment and/or procedures.

L W Michael Arrowsmith BSc(Hons) CEng FIMechE FIHEEM, Health Estate Journal technical editor, describes issues concerning Health Technical Memorandum 02 (HTM 02), the medical gas pipeline guidance developed to replace HTM 2022

This year’s Healthcare Estates Conference and Exhibition, building on the strengths of previous events in the series, is being billed as outstanding.

For all those involved in construction, development, refurbishment or the day-to-day running of healthcare facilities, Healthcare Estates 2006 will provide thought-provoking fresh ideas, educational updates, solutions to problems and a vast display of specialised products and services.

New and innovative secure storage technology offers greater convenience and flexibility than traditional systems, particularly for the storage of valuable instruments and controlled drugs, as David Price of System Store Solutions explains.

For decades, solutions based on the use of ordinary keys have been the mainstay of secure storage in healthcare applications, but these solutions have severe limitations. Keys can be mislaid, depriving authorised users of access to equipment and drugs which may be urgently needed.

At a time when there is new emphasis on diagnosis and treatment in the community, Barry Panton, chairman of Prime plc, a specialist investor in health and social care, and the UK’s leading private partner in LIFT, takes a look at the latest Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) report Designed with Care.

When was the last time you felt disheartened by your surroundings? We all encounter unpleasant environments – such as the poorly lit and poorly ventilated office to the crowded, stuffy shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon. Environments in which we exist on a day-to-day basis have a huge and undeniable bearing on our health. If we already feel under the weather we do not need to endure this experience when we visit the doctor.

Toks Adeniji, chief executive of lighting manufacturer Ardent Products, explains how to use the latest mood lighting to create an optimum healing and working environment.

Improving the environment in a hospital ward can cut the recovery time for non-operative patients by 14-21%.

Bill Moffitt, UK operations manager for TBS G.B. Telematic & Biomedical Services, provides an insight into how vital biomedical engineering and telemedicine services are moving forward.

Preventative maintenance of biomedical equipment is increasing in importance.

To significantly reduce healthcare-acquired infections in the NHS, more collaborative working is needed, and greater attention given to basic procedures. This became clear at the Hospital Hygiene conference held recently at ExCeL, London, as Nicholas Marshall and Jason Rayfield report.

Driving forward major reductions in healthcare-acquired infections in the NHS is a task needing scrupulous attention given to key factors such as hand hygiene and the cleaning of surfaces likely to be contaminated, the Hospital Hygiene conference heard.

For this article, Paul Robbins IEng MIHEEM IIPEM MCMI, electro-medical services manager, technical support services, Papworth Hospital NHS Trust, has been awarded IHEEM’s Northcroft Silver Medal. The article, previously published in the June 2005 edition of Health Estate Journal, outlines the rationale for using a risk management based medical device support program that incorporates the best elements of industrial practice.

The NHS is moving to a climate of payment by results, and this requires resources to be targeted where they are most effective. To the private engineering sector this is nothing new, as modern production lines can be halted quickly when plant fails, therefore our industrial colleagues have to ensure that their maintenance regimes are targeted to support mission critical elements of the business. To this end industry has developed many systems such as Reliability Engineering (RA) or Total Productive Maintenance (TPM), all of which have as their basis the application of Risk Management (RM) to support this aim (Fig. 1).