POWER MANAGEMENT
These, and other high-profile incidents,
serve to highlight the need for resilient back-up infrastructure, effective maintenance regimes, along with increased visibility of performance of electrical systems. To protect patients, medical equipment and vital data, within the clinical setting, intelligent software and smart solutions are increasingly being used to provide an insight into every aspect of electrical distribution within hospitals.
Condition-based maintenance Technologies, such as Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure software, can increase uptime and improve efficiency by enabling health estates teams to perform proactive and ‘condition-based’ maintenance on IoT enabled healthcare systems that utilise sensors to transmit information about the status of the equipment in real-time. In many hospital settings, preventive maintenance is performed at scheduled intervals – i.e. once a year or once every six months – regardless of whether or not the equipment is in need of maintenance. In some cases, it may be performed too often or not often enough. If the usage pattern of a back-up
generator shows that it has been used frequently, it may need maintaining more often. Equally, if it is not used enough, it may also require attention. If the equipment is able to indicate when it requires maintenance, based on its usage pattern, maintenance intervals can be optimised, therefore. Essentially, condition-based
maintenance is about improving staff productivity and reducing operating expense (opex). It is about performing the right maintenance, at the right time, in the right place. Many healthcare providers are finding that their operating budgets are strained, and it is hard to keep up with the demands of preventive maintenance. As a consequence, some ageing equipment is not getting enough attention based on its usage. A move towards condition-based
maintenance allows providers to optimise their maintenance budget by focusing the spend on those areas where it is necessary.
Visibility of critical infrastructure The newest power management systems help maintenance teams avoid equipment failures and repair costs by monitoring every aspect of electrical asset performance. This includes tracking circuits throughout the facility to avoid faulty conditions such as overload and overheating which can also help extend asset life. Providing they are IoT enabled and connected, UPS systems and backup generators can also be carefully monitored to ensure reliability, as can
IFHE DIGEST 2020 Secure backup power is essential to ensure safety during challenging procedures.
distributed IT applications or ‘edge computing’ environments. Other innovations include circuit
breaker ageing analysis. A breaker’s health is determined based on the number of operations, electrical data, and environmental conditions. This insight ensures only the appropriate level of maintenance is performed to keep a breaker operating at top performance. This helps improve uptime and extend breaker life. However, it can also reduce servicing time.
Whether it is a breaker tripping, a
transformer overheating, or an insulation issue in the operating room, all of this data must come together in a central location for effective decision-making and action. This level of digitisation is particularly important for an operating room. If the surgical equipment is faulty and there is an issue with the insulation, there is the potential for the current to flow through the patient to the ground; if the current is high enough, this could result in serious harm. To prevent this risk, insulation
monitoring can be performed in theatre and an alarm sounded if insulation integrity is compromised. EcoStruxure software enables the problem to be quickly identified and resolved. In the US, this analytical software is being used to monitor the University of Rochester Medical Center’s most critical
electrical distribution assets via the cloud. Event notifications are sent to facilities staff enabling them to gain advanced knowledge of potential problems. A Service Bureau analyses the asset performance data and provides actionable insights to help facility management deploy resources efficiently and avoid equipment failure. Nearly $1 million has been saved through early discovery of equipment problems – a 20 to 1 return on investment (ROI).
Care New England: protecting infants Faced with challenges from extreme weather events, including hurricanes and flooding, as well as ageing grid infrastructure, Care New England’s Women & Infants Hospital, in Providence, Rhode Island, has also adopted intelligent technology to ensure the highest levels of uptime and resilience. The Women & Infants Hospital is a
centre of excellence in women’s health, offering a wide range of services in infertility treatment, breast care, gynaecologic cancer and prenatal diagnosis. One of the largest obstetric facilities in the US, the hospital has a first- class reputation for leading-edge, utero fetal surgery and genetic diagnostics. Whether performing operations to
correct spina bifida or cardiac defects in the womb, or performing genome analysis for chromosomal abnormalities, the site
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