Electrical Contracting News (ECN) August 2016 | Page 44

SPECIAL FEATURE
HVAC

HEALTH CHECK

HVAC is a big part of the vital infrastructure helping to ensure modern healthcare delivery and patient wellbeing in hospitals across the UK . Chris Needham of Schneider Electric explains how modern HVAC solutions as part of a Building Management System ( BMS ) can help improve the healthcare environment and lower energy usage .

Hospitals are the second most energy intensive buildings to run after restaurants . Globally , the cost of operating healthcare sites , including energy costs , are on the rise .

More with less
Whether building a new hospital , or retrofitting an existing facility , hospitals are under mounting pressure to do
more with less , while also complying with strict regulations , ever changing technology , plus health and safety measures . The Centre for Sustainable Energy recently found that UK hospitals are one of the highest average carbon dioxide emitters in the country . In fact , energy alone makes up almost one quarter of the National Health Service ( NHS ) carbon footprint .
At the core of this efficiency problem are outdated and siloed processes , along with legacy systems . Fortunately , new advances in technology now make it possible to integrate traditionally separate
facility systems together to form an ‘ intelligent ’ hospital infrastructure . As a result , significant improvements in patient safety and outcomes and reductions in operational costs are possible . Through the use of intelligent infrastructure , hospitals can manage everything from HVAC to lighting to CCTV , patient journeys and valuable medical equipment assets . This improves both the environment of care and the bottom line . It ’ s vital that these platforms are flexible , scalable and repeatable , whilst delivering the right information , to the right people , at the right time .
Intelligent infrastructure
Acting as a central nervous system for the hospital an intelligent technology infrastructure integrates traditionally disparate systems . Power , building management , security and IT can be integrated to enable cross-system communication , as well as real time monitoring , optimisation and automation . When a hospital ’ s systems can ‘ talk ’ with each other without the need for complex interfaces , the resilience of the infrastructure as a whole is strengthened and provides access to greater information and
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