Humber River Hospital Adopts Automated Technology to Streamline Waste Handling, Soiled Linen

Humber River Hospital (HRH) in Toronto, Canada, is implementing TransVacs automated collection system as a lean and clean solution for handling waste, soiled linen and recycling at its new 1.8 million-square-foot acute-care facility. When completed in the fall of 2015, the new Humber River Hospital will be North Americas first fully digital hospital. It will also be a leader in integrating green principles in new hospital construction, resulting in one of North Americas most energy-efficient acute-care facilities.

The TransVac solution fit very well with the lean and green guiding principles we used to design our new hospital, says HRH president and CEO Rueben Devlin. Clean and dirty supplies never cross in the building, enhancing safety and quality of patient care by reducing the potential for cross-contamination and the transmission of infectious diseases. It reduces the unnecessary and inefficient movement of people and material, freeing staff to spend more time with patients. And it lessens our environmental footprint by increasing our recovery of recyclables.

The TransVac system is essentially a large, one-way pneumatic tube system. Using vacuum technology, trash, soiled linen and recyclables are transported from load stations located throughout the hospital directly to back of the house operations.  Unlike traditional manual methods of collection and transport, the TransVac system establishes a sealed, dedicated pathway for dirty materials, significantly reducing staff, patient and visitor exposure to airborne pathogens.

By automating these manual processes, we will free up resources that can then be re-directed back into patient care, while supporting a clean and healthy physical environment for everyone patients, staff and physicians, and visitors, Devlin explains.

Source: TransVac