Alan Wilson, of ModuleCo Healthcare, argues that in a post-COVID-19 world, to begin tackling the backlog of operations, modular healthcare facilities’ value and benefits will see them increasingly come into their own.

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

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.

The Carbon and Energy Fund, with the backing and support of IHEEM and HefmA, will later this year launch a new guide to effective and proven carbon and energysaving technologies suitable for use by NHS hospitals.

Creating the right interior designs for healthcare environments can make a fundamental difference to patients, staff, and visitors. British Gypsum discusses the key factors to consider.

At last October’s Healthcare Estates 2017 conference, Dr Aoife Hunt, a managing consultant and hospital evacuation specialist at people movement consultancy, Movement Strategies, explained how using ‘people flow’ data and analytics can help to optimise fire evacuation procedures in healthcare premises.

Kevin Belben, Technical Applications manager at water management specialists Cistermiser and Keraflo, discuss ‘the evolution of water temperature monitoring systems’, and how harnessing The Internet of Things is helping to improve patient safety and estate efficiency, and, he claims, offers the potential to save the healthcare sector ‘millions of pounds’ every year.

An associate partner and strategist in the health planning team at construction, property, and management consultancy, Rider Levett Bucknall, considers a changing NHS estate, with expectations that, in future, more outpatient care will be delivered closer to patients’ homes.

Although only around 400 cases are reported annually to the UK’s Health Protection Agency (HPA), climate change, and thus warmer cold water supplies entering hospitals, the bacterium’s apparent ability to mutate, and the considerable challenge of properly monitoring, and successfully identifying and addressing, all potential infection sources on a large hospital estate mean an increasing risk of hospital patients acquiring the potentially deadly waterborne infection, Legionnaires’ disease.

Following recent, high profile cases of public bodies “mislaying” sensitive information, Health Estate Journal considers the data security implications of increasing migration of patient and staff records to a central electronic NHS database, and examines the key issues for those responsible for maintaining such data safely and securely in hospitals and other care environments.

Last month over 100 service users moved into a new purpose-designed and built modern mental healthcare centre, The Redwoods Centre, near the ‘old’ Shelton Hospital on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, a new £46 million facility for adults with acute mental healthcare needs and organic (brain impairment) mental health conditions. It has been designed and built under ProCure21 by BAM Construction.

IHEEM’s recent seminar in Birmingham, ‘Dirty Little Secrets’, not only focused on the key priorities for keeping surgical instruments clean and sterile (HEJ – April 2012), but also featured a timely presentation by Dr Jimmy Walker, principal investigator, Decontamination, HPA Microbiology Services, at the Health Protection Agency, in which the highly experienced microbiologist shared his expertise on what appears to be becoming an increasingly prevalent problem for healthcare estates and engineering personnel.

‘Dirty Little Secrets’ was the title of a well-attended IHEEM seminar held in Birmingham in mid-February which considered some of the key challenges and obligations for those in hospitals and other healthcare facilities responsible for keeping surgical instruments clean, sterile, and fit-for-purpose, and, in the process, minimising risk of injury or surgical site infection to patients undergoing a wide range of procedures. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.

A recent IHEEM seminar on the subject saw speakers look at Building Information Modelling’s key benefits, the potential pitfalls, and the priorities for implementation.

An approach to low energy cooling and ventilation that the system’s supplier says can reduce energy consumption by between 80 and 90 per cent when compared with air-conditioning.

With the backdrop of an ageing population, the Department of Health’s new HBN 08-02 guidance offers specific advice on creating ‘dementia- friendly’ health and social care environments.

Dr Nebil Achour BSc MSc PhD, a researcher at Loughborough University who has 13 years’ experience and expertise in disaster prevention – with particular focus on the resilience of healthcare facilities – examines some of the ways that business continuity and resilience can be ‘built into’ hospitals and other healthcare facilities, to enable them to remain functional in the event of major ‘disaster’ or ‘hazard’ events such as earthquake, fire, or flood. He draws on his own work, experience, and reflections, and considers some of the key international thinking and approaches.

Phil Wade, director of Marketing at Static Systems Group, looks back at how bedhead services and trunking have developed over the past 40 years. Their development has, he says, been driven not only by increasingly stringent infection control criteria, the need for more attractive aesthetics, increased functionality, evolving communications technology, and the ability to adapt to meet changing needs, but equally by the growing part that clinicians and healthcare planners now play in the decision-making process for bedside layouts. He also looks forward to what we might expect to see in the future.

The organisers of this month’s HefmA 2014 annual conference and exhibition promise delegates “the opportunity to hear international perspectives on the current issues facing the worldwide ‘family’ of health estates and facilities professionals”.

In an article that first appeared in the June 2014 issue of Health Estate Journal’s sister publication, The Clinical Services Journal, the Copper Development Association highlights the growing recognition, both in the UK, and among healthcare research and provider bodies overseas, of the significant part that antimicrobial copper can play in preventing and controlling infection in healthcare settings.