As the coronavirus spreads, so our understanding grows that those providing health services must be protected from contracting the virus at their places of work – a pharmacy being no exception.

It is now widely accepted that creating a positive environment in healthcare settings has a significant impact on patients’ wellbeing, potentially leading to fewer infections, therapeutic benefits, reduced pain, and shorter hospital stays.1

The NHS Health Infrastructure Plan (HIP) is intended to deliver a rolling five-year programme of investment in health infrastructure, including capital to build new hospitals and resolve critical safety issues across the NHS estate.

Joris Post, director at Dutch-headquartered specialist in copper silver ionisation, ATECA, says he is passionate about the safety of water systems in hospitals and other healthcare facilities.

Chris Beric RPEQ, CPEng, MIEAust, NER, a Building Engineering and Maintenance (BEMS) engineer describes the healthcare engineering aspects of a complex project to redevelop and expand the Endoscopy Department at Townsville University Hospital.

Chris Harvey, head of Marketing at Stelrad, looks at the advantages of installing low surface temperature (LST) radiators in healthcare settings, particularly in terms of enhanced safety for more vulnerable very young and elderly patients.

The Institute of Occupational Medicine highlights the integral role that hospital ventilation plays in maintaining high standards of patient care, and discusses some of the key steps to take to ensure that such systems are efficiently maintained.

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 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.

Steve Hunt, managing director of Steven A Hunt & Associates, discusses the need for hospitals and industry experts to stay up-to-date with technology to help tackle the issue of Legionella developing in ‘ill-equipped’ domestic water systems.

The WHO has identified failure of waste management as a serious issue for healthcare facilities to tackle. James Lee, managing director of clinical and healthcare waste sack supplier, Cromwell Polythene, looks at what can be done to tackle this.

Jonathan Waggott, an expert in sanitary infection control issues who runs his own consultancy, discusses the risks posed by airborne transmission of a variety of harmful pathogens from outlets such as taps, sinks, and showers, in hospitals and other healthcare premises, and some of the actions that can be taken to help mitigate these risks.

A specialist in passive fire protection solutions, ‘innovative plasterboard products and systems’, and fibre cement boards, has launched a new dense plasterboard with integrated glass fibre mesh which it says combines a robust construction – making it well suited to areas subject to impact, attack, and abuse – with excellent acoustic performance.

Before the main conference presentations on the first day of last month’s Healthcare Estates 2018, professional actor, Jon Buckeridge, gave a memorable performance as the NHS’s founder, Aneurin Bevan, looking back on seven decades of the service, as if he had ‘woken up’ in 2018 at the IHEEM conference

How healthcare estates and facilities teams can best respond to the challenge of maintaining a safe, clean, and secure patient and staff environment at a time when not only are capital budgets being severely squeezed, but, in one headline speaker’s words, “the NHS is facing some of the most farreaching changes in its history”, was the major focus of both the presidential address, and the two keynote speeches – one of which also considered the case for “evidence-based” design – at this year’s Healthcare Estates conference and exhibition in Manchester. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.

Ray Bielby MIHEA, RN, MHSM, business development manager and medical equipment planner /clinical consultant, Schiavello Hospital Solutions, examines how medical equipment planning can encompass sustainability goals.

Concerns originally raised by Welsh Health Estates personnel over the risk of patients, and particularly the elderly and children, burning themselves on the body of mixer taps incorporating TMV3 thermostatic mixing valves (TMVs), have, suppliers claim, seen a concerted recent drive to improve such devices’ design.

Four of the individuals behind an unusual Dutch project to bring together, under one overall “umbrella”, a range of integrated healthcare, social care, educational and leisure facilities within a multicultural, multi-activity centre located in one of Amsterdam’s most socially diverse “problem” districts, describe how the project evolved, and its ambitious short- and long-term goals

A specialist in X-ray equipment, who spent over 30 years working for X-ray system manufacturers, IHEEM North Western branch member Keith Feay subsequently established his own consultancy.

The move to a modern protective security culture is outlined by Nick van der Bijl, Trust security manager, North Bristol NHS Trust. The International Federation of Hospital Engineering (IFHE) assisted with the commissioning of this article.

Since 1948 the National Health Service subscribed to the Home Office assessment that: “For some strange reason, people, staff and visitors seem to think that because hospitals are caring places, they are somehow immune from the effects of local crime and the ills of society”.