Like many NHS facilities, St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London is under pressure to deliver adequate, efficient clinical services. After securing funding from the local authority, the hospital’s team enlisted multiple specialists to help it improve energy consumption and asset performance. Among these was IAconnects, a monitoring solutions integrator, which supplied wireless sensor technology to capture various data points from the building management system (BMS).
Operating theatres are among the most energy-intensive areas in hospitals, consuming three to six times more energy than clinical wards. St George’s Hospital, which performs over 130,000 operations annually, wanted to capture all the available environmental data from 31 operating theatres and augment any missing data sets by installing control and monitoring devices.
Supported by sustainability funding, the hospital began working with several domain experts, including a BMS specialist and a consultancy, as part of its smart theatres project. It also enlisted IAconnects to deliver data capture, aggregation and dissemination services.
“St George’s needed a solution that would establish with the existing BMS and fill any gaps in environmental data,” explained Dave Lister, solutions consultant at IAconnects. “Our approach was to deploy over 500 wired and wireless sensing devices using LoRaWAN technology to monitor key environmental metrics.”
The hospital’s team can now access over 250 data points from the BMS, including temperature, humidity, CO2, total volatile organic compounds (TVOC), illuminance (Lux), air pressure and occupancy. The occupancy data enables automatic adjustments to HVAC systems, such as activating Set Back and Ramp Up modes. Meanwhile, hospital staff can monitor power consumption using wireless current transformers and BMS data.
Captured data is integrated into a middleware platform, MobiusFlow, which normalises and aggregates the information for use by Trust stakeholders. The platform allows for real-time analytics and automated responses, ensuring efficient energy management.
“The first phase has delivered significant benefits,” continued Lister. “These include energy savings exceeding £350k and a return on investment is expected in under two years. Meanwhile, by optimising the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems based on occupancy, the solution reduces stress on equipment, extending asset lifecycles.”
“The team at IAconnects Technology have become trusted advisors and suppliers in support of the St George’s Hospital Digital Roadmap,” said David Roskams, BYFH lead for digital transformation, estates and facilities division at St George’s Hospital. “IAconnects’ approach is always pragmatic and, at every step, considers the bigger picture. It operates comfortably in all aspects of what is a highly complex business model, considering not only Digital and Asset Management challenges but adding value to clinical, EFM and business intelligence working groups.”
Building on this success, the project is expanding into additional areas, including anaesthesia feeder rooms, with plans to monitor nitrous oxide systems and explore AI applications for predictive maintenance and environmental-patient data analysis. These advancements will shape the future of healthcare facilities under the New Hospital Programme.
For more information on energy monitoring solutions for hospitals, smart buildings and commercial facilities, visit the IAconnects website https://iaconnects.co.uk/solutions/energy-monitoring/
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