WATER CONTROLS
Achieving a careful balance So, how do we achieve greener healthcare, while also providing cleaner healthcare? As a water controls specialist, Rada is well-versed on the careful balance that the ‘clean, green relationship’ must maintain. One must never come at the sacrifice of the other. Water controls are vital components that staff, patients, and visitors, rely on for hygiene, cleanliness, and infection control. However, water isn’t an unlimited resource, so must be used responsibly. The way it’s managed and distributed can also have wider implications on energy consumption and carbon emissions. They are just one element of the estate, and, while I can’t provide all the answers, I do think water controls offer a useful demonstration of how we can meet greener, cleaner targets as one.
Preventing problems: a digital approach
In healthcare, ‘prevention’ is usually talked about in the context of infection prevention and control, but taking a preventative approach is key to creating greener estates too – for instance, preventing further health crises by ensuring that the estate is resilient in the face of new challenges, rather than responding reactively, or limiting its contribution to climate change to help prevent the problem from worsening. In either sense, buildings must pre-empt issues and be ready to adapt to changing demands.
Both the NHS England and WHO frameworks for climate-resilient healthcare systems emphasise the role that digital innovation has to play, and I think this is really key here. The insight and data that digitally connected technology offers can help to improve the operation and occupation of premises in all sectors. At Rada, we’ve been harnessing digitally connected technologies in our product development for some time. We’re passionate about the difference that automation, remote monitoring capabilities, and digital precision can make to the vitality of estates.
‘Digital’ is, by nature, more precise and accurate than human intervention. This helps to ensure that products are optimised for infection control, with correct water temperatures, and the ability to programme key hygiene measures precisely. The ability to connect digital taps to building management systems offers estates and facilities teams intelligence on how the products are being used, and central control over programmes and product functionality. Estates teams can use this intelligence to make data-driven adjustments to the system, meaning that product operation can be optimised.
60 Health Estate Journal January 2021
Rada’s Intelligent Care app; a complete building solution that enables all water controls technology to be monitored, managed, and controlled, from a central dashboard.
Reducing demands on the building While digital infrastructure can help the estate run better, it also offers the added benefit of reducing demands on the building, and, of course, the staff responsible for maintaining it and the plant and equipment within it. Connection with remote monitoring platforms means there may less of a need for healthcare engineering personnel to be physically present on site at certain times. Manual checks on a hospital’s water system can, for example, be both time- and labour- intensive, in that they generally require a number of staff to circulate the estate to undertake them; with digital remote monitoring, much of the ‘legwork’ can be eliminated. The potential for staff to manage the estate remotely can also have a positive environmental impact; fewer vehicular visits to different sites by healthcare estates and healthcare engineering personnel reduce carbon emissions, in the same way that remote consultations between patients and, for instance, their GP, helps cut the NHS’s overall travel-associated carbon footprint.
Water without waste
With climate change increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events that can jeopardise access to safe water supplies, both responsible use of water, and proactive management of water
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safety, are becoming ever more vital. One of the key elements of NHS England’s and the WHO’s plans to create more climate- resilient, sustainable healthcare systems is water conservation. Water is essential for keeping spaces clean and preventing the spread of infection, but it’s not an unlimited resource. While we have a responsibility to ensure that clean water supplies are readily available, we can be smarter in the way we use it. As previously mentioned, digital technology has a key part to play in sustainability efforts. The level of precision that digital control can offer helps to ensure that water use is closely managed. Digital taps, showers, and water controls, can be programmed so that water flow rates and times are set to a highly specific degree of accuracy; that means long enough to enable proper handwashing, for the right duration, but not so long that water is unnecessarily wasted. The intuitive nature of digital products also offers ways to further manage water use. Vital infection control practices such as duty flushing or, less often, but just as key, thermal disinfection of the water system, of course use water too. In complex, busy settings – that healthcare estates often are – understanding when and when not to carry out these tasks can be tricky. There’s always a risk of either not flushing systems enough because you
Water is essential for keeping spaces clean and preventing the spread of infection, but it’s not an unlimited resource. While we have a responsibility to ensure that clean water supplies are readily available, we can be smarter in the way we use it
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