OPERATING THEATRE DESIGN
supply voltages, battery voltages and cabinet temperature, battery life, serial number, software and circuit boards, and time since the last battery change/ service. If we have a failure on the system, we can remotely identity the cause, resulting in a first-time fix when our engineer attends.
‘SMART’ connectivity
‘SMART,” he continued, “is a vast concept umbrella, and it has become an idiom denominating various modern technologies. It is, in reality, an acronym for ‘Self-monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology’, and Brandon Medical has developed i2i technologies. “We even have connectivity through a user’s smartphone, where they can walk up to a ‘dead’ battery system, and, using Near Field Communication, pick up a ‘data dump' from the unit to tell us why it’s ‘dead’, and its last known status. We can ‘daisy chain’ these units together to simplify the installation, and can now start to do more because we’ve got sensors – and thus some intelligence on what’s happening with this equipment.” Brandon Medical has also undertaken a ‘smart upgrade’ of its operating lights, adding integral monitoring of power supply voltage and current, light module temperature, and light status. Added connectivity, meanwhile, includes RS485, Modbus, and the company’s own i2i (‘isolated to integrated’) secure wireless communication between theatre lights and the battery system, together with ‘SMART’ integration with Brandon’s iTCP intelligent theatre control panel. Adrian Hall said: “This allows us to use the operating light as a known load and test for our battery system, which considerably simplifies maintaining and testing that critical emergency power system.
Processing and connectivity “Add in our smart control panel,” he said, “and we have some processing as well as connectivity, so we can start to look at lots of data inputs and make some inferences; for example, I could say: ‘Well, it’s 2 am,
emissions – by eliminating the need for multiple engineer visits.”
All the information gleaned via this SMART equipment and technology could be ‘merged’ with SMART building information into an ‘enhanced patient record’. He elaborated: “For instance, we would have valuable information about what ‘external factors’ may have impacted a procedure – Was there a power failure?, Was the oxygen supply OK?, embedding the data as a text file in the record. That is when we truly start to see the benefits of Self-monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology.”
Brandon Medical’s iTCP is an ‘intelligent digital, programmable, connected’ theatre control panel with integral computers and communications.
the ‘Theatre in use’ sign is off, the general and operating lights are turned off, the theatre ventilation is in standby, and the AGSS is off. I’m thus pretty confident that this theatre is not in use.' So, with full connectivity, I can start an automated test routine, instruct the operating lights to turn on at 100 per cent load, tell the power system to switch to battery, and commence a battery test, and measure that battery voltage for five, 10, and 30 minutes. I can detect if somebody does come to start using the theatre, and automatically abort and return to a standard operation, or complete the test, and compare the results with last week’s and predict battery life. If they are approaching their end of life, I can send an alert to a Building Management System, or via the device’s 4G connection to a duty engineer, while via Brandon’s new Cloud Monitoring service, our monitoring team can see the condition of components and start to predict equipment failure before the site is even aware. This has the potential to reduce both costs and carbon
This concluded this part of the presentation, and here Adrian Hall handed over to Scott Pickering, Brandon Medical’s International Business Development manager, to discuss the same concept, and how it applied to Brandon’s ‘flexible range of pendants’.
Pendant configuration and use Scott Pickering began: “Traditionally, C- mounted pendants have been used with multiple horizontal and vertical moving arms and consoles. Combined with ultraclean ventilation canopies, theatre lighting, and the surgeon’s control panels, they form the main backbone of any theatre – connecting the patient and staff to the critical medical gas and electrical outlets that power and run the machines that enable the surgeon to operate, and the anaesthetist to keep the patient alive. Increasingly, theatres are becoming less dedicated to one type of surgery, and more flexible for use by many different disciplines. However, different surgeries tend to use differing equipment. Equip every theatre for all surgery, and fully integrate it from day one, and the project costs would be unacceptable to most NHS Trusts. So, is there a way to ensure sufficient flexibility during the initial design and build stage to meet future requirements without an exorbitant cost? “Modern operating theatres,” he continued, “start with a table, a patient, and the surgical team, generally in the centre of a theatre, so we need to build around this –
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August 2021 Health Estate Journal 53
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