Building Better Healthcare

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) is an international centre of excellence in child healthcare.

Together with their research partner, the University College London (UCL) Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, they host the UK’s only paediatric National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Biomedical Research Centre (BRC).

Founded in 1852, the hospital has been dedicated to children’s healthcare and finding new and better ways to treat childhood illnesses. Many of the children who visit or stay at the hospital are susceptible to infection because of their illness or treatment. 

GOSH strive to protect them from infection – especially respiratory, enteric viruses and antibiotic-resistant organisms.  

In the continued effort to minimise or prevent transmission of infection Installation Technology were engaged, as part of the technology refresh programme supporting the implementation of Epic® Electronic HealthcareRecords (EHR) solution, to find a way to deploy wireless communications into clinically sterile locations. 

The challenge, to:     
1. be compatible with the ARUBA solution
2. meet infection control standards   
3. have chemical resistance to chlorine and hydrogen peroxide
4. be visually friendly
5. be easy to deploy, maintain and clean

Solution

Initially, the Installation Technology GOSH account team focused on external devices from various manufactures as, in the first instance, it was thought the Ingress Protection (IP) rating(1) and construction would more than meet the required specification. However, after detailed dialogue with the Infection Control(IC) team, it quickly became apparent that the cleaning agents used as part of the clinical process, could penetrate the surface which would increase the level of clinical risk.  It was also highlighted that, given the design of the various of the devices it might be challenging to clean and maintain the equipment in a clinical environment. 

The discussion with IC helped the team not only to understand the etiquette and policies regarding IC, but also the potential impacts on clinical outcomes - this in turn promoted a slightly different approach. 

After gathering and reviewing data sheets for a number of products from across the supply chain the team identified the Oberon 1018-14polycarbonate enclosure, which not only met all of challenges, but also worked with a number of suppliers Access Point’s, including the latest generations from CISCO and Ubiquity.

With the full support of the IC team, the solution can now be deployed across the Trust providing connectivity to support clinical pathways in a way never seen before. Given this success, Installation Technology have been approached to deploy the solution within the ZAYED Centre for Research (ZCR)building supporting level four GMP cleaning rooms and research laboratories.  

(1)  - British BS EN 60529:1992,European IEC 60509:1989