RECENT NEWS

With a high quality treatment environment acknowledged to significantly speed the recovery of those suffering from mental illness, and the Government recognising the need to update older, outdated facilities.

Off-site and system building solutions specialist, MTX Contracts, has completed a new £2.2 million ‘state-ofthe- art’ modular mortuary facility at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd in North Wales.

IHEEM and Health Estate Journal will be supporting ‘Design in Mental Health’, a new networking event being held from 14-15 May at Birmingham’s National Motorcycle Museum linking those who design, construct, and manage, mental healthcare facilities, with end-users.

Five companies – Balfour Beatty, Skanska, Vinci, Willmott Dixon, and Kier – have submitted tenders to the West London Mental Health NHS Trust in a bid to become main contractor for the Broadmoor Hospital redevelopment.

It has been an issue of concern for me for some time that the fast-track development to technological advances has left some of the fundamental basics behind, and caused risk to patients on numerous occasions.

The Building & Engineering Services Association (B&ES) has announced new customisation and prioritisation components for its industry standard maintenance schedules, ‘to help users simplify the tendering process, reduce building maintenance costs, and ensure compliance with relevant legislation’.

As part of a wider regeneration scheme, BAM Construction has begun building for Portsmouth City Council an ‘iconic’ new building, with a ‘landmark tubular structure’ to include community, youth, and health facilities, in the city’s Somerstown.

A compact ‘energy from waste’ solution, claimed to enable hospitals to turn their clinical waste streams into heat, has been unveiled by ‘green technology specialist’, DPS Global.

ATB Secure has added a new aluminium Horizontal Slider Window, complete with anti-vandal mesh, to its Taurus Max enhanced security window range.

America’s Fingi has appointed Airwave Europe as exclusive UK distributor of its mobile platform, which enables hospital patients to operate room controls, access patient services, and communicate with nurses, using their smartphones.

DDC Dolphin has launched two new macerators, the Pulpmatic Ultima and Uno, which it says ‘set new standards in the maceration of biodegradable pulp product bedpans, bottles, vomit bowls, and other similar articles’, thanks to a ‘unique’, patented, hands-free operation, which eliminates potential patient-to-patient cross-contamination.

Starkstrom has ‘reconfirmed its partnership’ with endoscopy specialist, Richard Wolf.

ICS Temperature Control, a specialist in cooling and heating temperature control, has fitted each of over 60 hospital sites run by a leading private healthcare provider with a new fluid-based cooling system, having first decommissioned existing chillers, many of which, surveys found, were in need of replacement.

A new central endoscope reprocessing unit formed via the conversion of an existing room within the central sterile services department at The University of North Tees Hospital, Stockton, which also serves the nearby University Hospital of Hartlepool, has been equipped with four BES Decon automatic endoscope reprocessors, supplied with sterile water via an EWS (Environmental Water Systems [UK]) reverse osmosis (RO) system.

Steve Rees (pictured), a former Vice-President and President of CHES (The Canadian Healthcare Engineering Society), who has worked in healthcare facilities management for 33 years, and is currently Vice-President of Capital Management, Edmonton Zone for Alberta Health Services, received CHES’s 2012 Hans Burgers Award ‘for outstanding contributions to healthcare engineering’.

The IFHE’s 23rd Annual Congress will take place from 12-16 October 2014 in Buenos Aires at the UCA University, Puerto Madero.

Member representatives from every state of Australia, together with a large number of corporate sponsors and supporters of the healthcare engineering industry, attended the Institute of Hospital Engineering, Australia (IHEA)’s Annual National Conference at the Hotel Grand Chancellor in Hobart, Tasmania, over four days during early October last year.

The IFHE’s 38th Executive Committee meeting and 46th Council meetings will take place at 9.00 am (on both days) on 9 and 10 September respectively this year at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) in Putrajaya, Malaysia.

Members of the many national IFHEaffiliated healthcare estates and facilities organisations in Europe, the US, Canada, Australasia, Asia, and the Far East, should soon be able to access a full online version of the 2013 IFHE Digest on their own organisations’ websites, while printed copies have already been widely disseminated.

The 2013 (5th) IFHE Europe European Congress for Hospital Engineering (ECHE) gets under way on 10 April at Bern’s Kursaal & Congress- Center, with the conference programme set to include presentations on subjects as varied as: