Against a backdrop of pressures on bedspace, the potential for wireless technology such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to facilitate increasing use of step-down care via a new generation of ‘hospital hotels’.

When replacing, upgrading or installing, Airwave Healthcare has the perfect bedside and bedroom entertainment solution.

The proper and expert maintenance of high voltage switchgear is vital not only to hospitals’ uninterrupted operation, but also to the safety of personnel working on or near the equipment.

The head of Health at Arcadis examines some of the key things to consider when ‘buying in’ external consultancy services.

The IFHE-Europe Congress for Hospital Engineering 2015, themed ‘Better productivity in healthcare with technology’, was held from 2-5 June in Turku on Finland’s south-west coast, hosted and organised by the Association of Finnish Hospital Engineering, SSTY, assisted and facilitated by the University of Turku.

Before the start of June’s highly successful IFHE-EU 2015 Congress in Turku in Finland (see also page 17), the Federation’s Executive Committee and Council met at the city’s Radisson Blu Marina Palace Hotel (see photo below), reports IHEEM’s IFHE representative, Andy Wavell.

Health Estate Journal reports on the design and construction of the UK’s first dedicated transplantation centre, at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, considering some of the complex practical, adjacency, structural, and aesthetic challenges the project team had to overcome to create a facility designed to provide both leading edge medical training and research facilities, and a light, spacious, and uplifting patient and staff environment.

Colin Dobbyne, director of OR1, describes OR Networks’ recent installation of a sophisticated new video communication and patient entertainment system in the intensive care unit at London’s St Mary’s Hospital, explaining how the “world first” equipment was designed and manufactured to meet the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust’s specific requirements.

Colin Russell, healthcare specialist at Schneider Electric (pictured), explains how the company has recently worked with Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust to implement a major energy-saving project at the Trust’s Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton.

Creating a new hospital that proves itself to be sustainable on a greenfield site is quite a challenge. Paul Bell, director at Ryder Architecture, describes how the St Andrews Community Hospital and Health Centre has been delivered to achieve just that for NHS Fife.

Government plans for NHS reforms will have a direct impact on the specification of security products within hospitals, surgeries, and care facilities, argues Tina Hughan, head of marketing for ASSA ABLOY, who considers the likely ramifications, and how security products must adapt to accommodate these changes.

Over the next few years the NHS is set to undergo its most significant changes in generations. Peter Wilkinson, a partner at Drivers Jonas Deloitte, who leads the company’s regional Construction Advisory practice and national public sector business, explores what this might mean for the NHS estate.

Operations manager, Ashley Heming, and area sales manager, Andy Cassie, of specialist cleaning and cleaning services company, CK Group, explain how a close 15-year relationship with Kent’s Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust is continuing, with the firm having recently undertaken a thorough preoccupation clean at the new 513-bed PFI-funded Pembury Hospital, one of the UK’s first acute hospitals to offer 100% single-bed en suite accommodation, before its first patients moved in.

As one of the UK’s largest public sector carbon emitters, the NHS is under particularly strong pressure to deliver action to reduce its CO2 emissions and meet Government targets, while joining other public sector organisations in leading the vanguard against climate change.

How the lessons learned from a concerted Marks & Spencer sustainability drive that was established, and subsequently enthusiastically championed by, the retailer’s then CEO and chairman, Sir Stuart Rose, could be translated to an NHS under fierce pressure to cut its own carbon footprint, was the subject of a morning keynote session at November’s Healthcare Estates 2011 conference in Manchester.

The contribution made by individual healthcare estates and engineering personnel both to the specialist field, and to helping to educate, develop, and encourage, their peers and colleagues, was recognised in style during November’s Healthcare Estates event in Manchester.

Grant Macdonald, managing director at supplier of mechanical and electronic door locks, Codelocks, examines some of the important issues for healthcare estates and facilities personnel considering how best to protect parts of a healthcare facility – large or small – given the need to minimise costs and not “over-specify” on security, while simultaneously ensuring that patients, staff, and hospital property, are safeguarded.

Tony Roger, project manager at building services contractor, Shepherd Engineering Services (SES), describes the successful delivery of the £30 million New Oncology Expansion project at The James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough.

‘Estates as the enabler’ was the title of an interesting debate session on the morning of the second day of November’s Healthcare Estates conference, in which participants focussed on what part healthcare buildings and other ‘built assets’ would play in a future UK care landscape potentially quite different from that of today.

Chilled beam and fan coil-based air conditioning systems are both well-established means of effectively controlling the temperature, comfort, and air purity of the internal environment.