Containment Engineering
The robust control of various operations/ activities in Healthcare & Hospitals further minimized the transmission of infectious disease in the hospital and local communities. In order to isolate any outbreak, medical labs, healthcare facilities & hospital must incorporate several important features into their design & engineering. During design & engineering, it is must to refine and establish the containment zones, quarantine area and SOPs for the isolation based on the epidemiological and clinical settings. Certain safety standards need to be defined, which sometimes means that even the URS of the medical equipment need to be re-define. In the Medical facility, infection spread is predominantly by large droplet transfer; therefore, a proper handwashing, covered drains and other hygiene are the most important ways to combat the spread of the illness.
Even if any infectious disease or an outbreak for some reason doesn’t require special biosafety restrictions, it is wise to allocate an area and set of dedicated ventilation devices (fume hoods, snorkels etc.) to that particular applications. Standalone biosafety cabinets or having a dedicated biosafety space could be alternative suitable solution. As in any Healthcare & Hospital facilities, the HVAC system also plays a vital role in keeping people safe and healthy. HVAC systems with HEPA filtration and proper material selection that won’t flake or give off particulate matter is required for containment/ biosafety medical Lab/ viral medical area.
However a customised design & engineering strategy must be always evaluated on a case – to – case basis to decide the best possible approach to keeping patients and healthcare staff as safe and healthy as possible.
