COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
Courtney Thorne’s Altra Health healthcare system incorporates multiple on-board sensors ‘to diligently monitor resident and staff activity across the entire hospital’. The company said: “This comprehensive monitoring ensures the creation of the safest possible environment for everyone involved.”
seek evidence of compliance, because as it clearly states in HTM 08-03 Section 3.8, ‘Materials, components and completed installations should conform as applicable with the current Standards, including all amendments. Construction products should comply with European Standards and Technical Specifications (ESTS). Wherever reference is made to a British Standard, a corresponding ESTS (generally ISO series) should be equally acceptable. Suppliers and manufacturers must be able to clearly demonstrate compliance; this in the form of a relevant Standard or Standards, supplemented by certification that the product/solution has been independently tested against the Standard(s) and passed all relevant tests’. Testing solutions using wire-free
communication services is not as straightforward as it sounds. Radio interference can happen with substandard design and components whereby the solution can give false messages, can fail to communicate, or can cause other wire- free solutions to fail. Only by designing in resilience and resistance to interference, and then having the solutions tested to the most rigorous of standards, leading to documented certificated approval, can NHS managers satisfy their statutory obligation and duty of care to their patients, colleagues, and Trust Board. There is a cost associated with building
in resilience, and then having a third- party test house test your solution to destruction, and this adds to the solution’s cost. As is always the case, what appears on the face of things to be a bargain, may well be a very costly mistake when it fails, cannot be supported, or causes catastrophic problems with adjacent technology.
Conclusions The old adage is that there are some things we can change, but equally some that are outside our control and cannot change. We cannot change HTM 08-03 overnight. The guidance in it is over 10 years’ old; just think back to 2013, and about how you connected to the Internet or the mobile phone you had. This is how quickly technology moves, leaving the well-intentioned HTM well behind. While finding the relevant standard
appropriate to a product, solution, or service, is the responsibility of the service- provider, the NHS Trust customer’s management must be satisfied that this
74 Health Estate Journal June 2024
has been undertaken correctly, and that all certification is attributed to the service being offered and is current. For example, radio communications to be used in ‘life critical’ situations (hospitals) should be certified to a relevant Standard such as ETSI EN 300 220-1 v3.1.1 (2017), and be certified to Category 1 of the Standard. Page 17 of this standard clearly states that where Short Range Devices may have inherent safety of human life implications, only Cat 1 level receivers should be deployed. If in doubt NHS management teams should always ask for proof from solution-suppliers or manufacturers, and reject any solutions where this cannot be readily provided. We can take comfort in the fact that
wire-free technology in healthcare is now the norm. More and more NHS Trusts are realising that with the right wire-free solutions – designed to meet HTM 08- 03, certified to relevant Standards, and that do everything they are designed to do – huge savings in installation and commissioning costs can be achieved. Hardware can be installed without needing to vacate wards, without the need to install new or disturb existing bedhead trunking, and the solution can be moved and / or adapted over its lifetime without any upheaval.
Further reading n 1 Health Technical Memorandum 08-03: Bedhead services. Department of Health, 2013.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp- content/uploads/2021/05/HTM_08-03. pdf
n ETSI EN 300 220-1 EN Standard for Short Range Devices (SRD) operating in the frequency range 25 MHz to 1 000 MHz; Part 1: Technical characteristics and methods of measurement. European Telecommunications Standards Institute, 2017.
http://tinyurl.com/2aufzx56
Dave Hewitt
Following a long and successful career in the electronic fire and security industry, Dave Hewitt has been the Sales & Marketing director at Courtney Thorne for the last six years. His management of the company’s diverse commercial team, together with the introduction of new solutions designed specifically for the hospital environment, have led to year-on-year growth.
Courtney Thorne said: “The fire and security market is heavily regulated to comply with relevant standards, Fire, Police, and Insurers’ requirements, and it is against this backdrop that Dave Hewitt has helped drive the development of our Connect Health Nurse Call solution. This means that it not only complies with relevant standards for the NHS, but has also passed third-party testing. Connect Health gives Estates and Procurement managers documented reassurance that their decisions to use Courtney Thorne’s nurse call and staff attack solutions will be the right ones.”
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