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HVAC monitoring systems help engineers contain infectious diseases, save money

Healthcare Life Safety Compliance, April 1, 2019

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

Hospital engineers don’t have much time on their hands these days. So much information about their facility’s operation crosses their paths on a daily basis that it’s hard to stop and think about how that information can be used to save money and make the facility safer. Frankly, unless a facility has a complex computer system that alerts personnel to the things they should be changing, a hospital engineer’s job is mainly reactive.

Many healthcare facilities periodically check HVAC systems and air quality. However, these checks are often still done manually, which gives bacteria more time to spread. Manual checks are also a reactive approach. To help identify potential contamination issues before area shutdowns are necessary, some hospitals implement continuous monitoring systems that provide real-time updates on air quality and ventilation operations throughout the entire facility.

Continuous monitoring keeps watch over life safety systems such as fire suppression and HVAC systems, which control the physical environment in crucial places such as operating rooms (OR) and patient treatment areas. If there are issues in these systems, results can be deadly.

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Healthcare Life Safety Compliance.

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