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St George’s uses ‘catalytic converter for gas and air’
Dental patients and women in labour will be given ‘green gas and air’ at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, ‘reducing pain on the planet, as well as during childbirth and tooth extractions’. In a UK first, the south-west London
teaching hospital has invested in a device dubbed the ‘catalytic converter of gas and air’. The photo shows Vicki Grayson, lead Midwife for the St George’s midwifery-led birth unit, with the device – which is made by Medclair, working in partnership with Ultraflow manufacturer, BPR Medical – and is part of the hospital’s drive to reduce its carbon footprint. BPR Medical said: “Nitrous oxide, regularly combined with oxygen to produce Entonox, provides sedation in dental and emergency procedures, and pain relief in labour. However, the gas has almost 300 times the global warming potential of carbon dioxide.” The two companies say the mobile
nitrous oxide conversion unit at St George’s will be the UK’s first trialled in a dental department. It breaks gas down into harmless oxygen and nitrogen before it is released, reducing its impact on the
environment, and staff exposure to the medical gas. It is already being used in endoscopy at the hospital, and by the midwifery-led birth unit. Dr Emma Evans, South West London Clinical lead for Net Zero, and consultant anaesthetist at St George’s, said: “Patients won’t experience any difference in their clinical care, and their pain relief will remain the same, but after its use, the gas will be disposed of through the device. After trialling mobile devices in our dental, endoscopy, and midwifery-led birth units, we will scope out the potential for a central system to service a larger number of clinical areas too.” Kate Slemeck, MD for St George’s
University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “These devices eliminate 99% of the nitrous oxide released into the environment, and their implementation plays a small, but very important, part in our overall Green Plan.” MD of BPR Medical, Richard Radford, said: “The device handles exhaled nitrous oxide in a way that is both climate-friendly and convenient to the patient, while giving them safe, efficient pain relief.”
Gothenburg hospital gets ‘world’s first’ optical linen sorting technology
Östra Sjukhuset in Gothenburg, one of four sites that form Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Sweden’s largest university hospital, claims to be ‘setting the global standard in sustainable hospital waste and linen management’ after appointing Envac to install its optical linen sorting technology as part of a major modernisation programme. Envac says this is the first instance worldwide of optical sorting technology being used to manage soiled linen in a hospital environment, adding that its use – following a successful procurement bid – will significantly reduce staff time spent manually sorting soiled linen at the hospital’s offsite laundry.
Envac’s pneumatic waste collection system will collect bagged waste in ‘inlets’, before transporting it via vacuum technology along a pipe network installed within the hospital’s walls. The pipe network will replace the hospital’s existing automatic transportation system infrastructure, which has served it since the 1960s. When the inlets are full, the colour-coded bags of used linen – with each colour denoting a specific
Chief Executive of Medclair, Jonas Lundh, added: “It’s fantastic to see that more hospitals across the NHS are adopting nitrous oxide conversion systems. Scaled across the entire health service, this technology could reduce NHS nitrous oxide emissions by up to 75%. We are seeing more and more innovative efforts like this across the health service to tackle the global climate crisis.”
Bucks Trust to upgrade hospital messaging systems
Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust has selected Multitone Electronics to supply and implement a range of integrated critical messaging solutions. The Trust, which
linen stream – will be transported to a purpose-built collection station in the basement, and automatically placed on conveyor belts. As the bagged linen moves along these, it is scanned by optical colour readers that determine where each bag belongs, with the bags automatically directed to the correct cart before being sent to the laundry facility.
The installation is scheduled to start this year, and expected to be completed by 2028. On completion, the pipe network will be 2,463 metres long, serve 129 waste inlets, and manage one general waste stream and two linen streams, which include staff and patient linen.
provides care for over half a million people annually, currently uses a legacy system at its Amersham and Wycombe Hospitals, and will use Multitone as its principal supplier across its acute sites – for equipment including a new digital platform incorporating a number of Smartphone Multitone Appear Messaging licences. The systems’ selection follows the recent successful completion of upgrade implementation at Stoke Mandeville Hospital near Aylesbury ‘using state-of-the-art digital technology’ – the Multitone i-Message Platform and Appear Messaging. The new Trust-wide project will
secure the interconnection of all three main sites, maintaining local resilience in the event of network failure.
August 2022 Health Estate Journal 15 HEALTH SECTOR NEWS
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