FEATURE ARTICLES
INNOVATIONS AT WORK DURING COVID-19 CRISIS
FLEXIBLE MEDICAL GAS PIPING SPEEDS UP DEPLOYMENT OF MEDICAL GASES As part of the nationwide response to the COVID-19 situation, Healthcare Engineers, Contractors and Medical Gas Installers are under extreme pressure to construct temporary hospitals in record time. As the majority of these temporary hospitals require an oxygen pipeline infrastructure which although temporary must still adhere to national and international standards engineering teams are utilising a revolutionary flexible medical gas tubing product, comprising of a pliable corrugated stainless steel or copper alloy tube with an external polyethylene cover, supplied on easy to handle disposable drums in long continuous lengths. The flexibility, long lengths and the ability to bend the product by hand to a tight radius allow the piping to be quickly installed within temporary hospitals from external supply tanks or manifold directly to a patient’s bedside. Unlike typical rigid copper gas pipe, installers were able to simply unreel and pull the piping through the facility, around corners, up floors and down corridors, until the final connection. Thanks to its quick assembly fittings, the piping was attached using only basic hand tools and with little to no brazing. This was an invaluable asset to the medical gas installers on site and who’s remit was to install a medical gas piping network from bulk tanks to bedhead quickly and safely in a matter of days rather than weeks.
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he flexible medical gas piping was used in Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, and in New York City’s Javits Convention Centre and Central Park temporary field hospital. The field hospital, Javits Centre and Cleveland Clinic sites were rapidly constructed to support the on-going pandemic and relieve other area hospitals of patient overflows. Although a relatively new product to the US market, MediTrac flexible medical gas piping has been installed within hospitals in Europe since 2005 and more recently within hospitals in Africa.
Cleveland Clinic Temporary Hospital (Hope Hospital)
Central Park Temporary Field Hospital
The Cleveland Clinic facility, to be called Hope Hospital, will initially include 327 patient beds for lowacuity COVID-19 patients. The four-
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