Hospital | EPFL Graph Search

A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emergency department to treat urgent health problems ranging from fire and accident victims to a sudden illness. A district hospital typically is the major health care facility in its region, with many beds for intensive care and additional beds for patients who need long-term care. Specialized hospitals include trauma centers, rehabilitation hospitals, children's hospitals, seniors' (geriatric) hospitals, and hospitals for dealing with specific medical needs such as psychiatric treatment (see psychiatric hospital) and certain disease categories. Specialized hospitals can help reduce health care costs compared to general hospitals. Hospitals are classified as general, specialty, or government depending on the sources of income received. A teaching hospi

Characterisation of Hospital Wastewater: the Case of the CHUV

Laura Marie Blanc

The aim of this study was to characterize hospital effluents in investigating the CHUV importance as source of pollutants, the range and amounts of pharmaceuticals that are used in the hospital and the need of source treatment of the hospital sewage. The CHUV is the biggest hospital of Lausanne (Switzerland), and 71% of its beds are in a building named “BH” (Hospital Building). The BH treats around 609 patients a day and releases an important volume of water (735 litres per patient per day), potentially highly concentrated in pharmaceuticals. The drugs the most delivered to the BH patients are the analgesic Paracetamol (787 g/day) and two anti-inflammatory substances: Ibuprofen (106 g/day) and Mefenamic acid (78 g/day). Among the 39 analysed pharmaceuticals, the most concentrated in the BH effluents are Paracetamol (423 ng/l) and Ciprofloxacin (22 ng/l). The CHUV effluents plus many other wastes from Lausanne city (homes, other health centres, etc.) are treated in Vidy wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). The treated water is then released into Lake Geneva. The load of pharmaceuticals from the CHUV was found to be relatively small, compared to the total load entering in Vidy WWTP. Maximal percentages of the WWTP inputs from the BH effluents were shown by two antibiotics: Ciprofloxacin (2.8%) and Sulfamethoxazole (4.3%). This indicates that many drugs are excreted in domestic wastewater. Although the drug levels in the water from the hospital are low compared to the total levels reaching the WWTP, they still represent a significant point source and wastewater treatment at the hospital or in the WWTP is necessary. But Vidy WWTP was shown to be particularly inefficient in treating some of the pharmaceuticals that entered it. Therefore, the risk for the environment has been assessed. Diclofenac, Ibuprofen, Paracetamol, Propranolol, Ciprofloxacin, Clarithromycin, Sulfamethoxazole and 17α-Ethinylestradiol were from 2 to 601111 times more concentrated in Vidy WWTP effluents than acceptable in terms of calculated risk quotient (RQ) values. So, in some cases, a very important risk for the environment has been demonstrated here. Improvements of the WWTP efficiency are now in progress as a response to this. Treated water leaving Vidy WWTP is further diluted (at least 84.7 times) when it enters Lake Geneva, however this study revealed detectable levels of some pharmaceuticals in the lake itself, albeit below the predicted no effect concentration (PNEC) in all cases measured in this study.

2010

Assessment of water, sanitation, and hygiene services in district health care facilities in rural area of Mekong Delta, Vietnam

Solomzi Makohliso, Klaus Benedikt Schönenberger

Access to sufficient water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) services is a crucial requirement for patients during therapy and general well-being in the hospital. However, in low- and middle-income countries, these services are often inadequate, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality of patients. This study aimed at assessing the current situation of WASH services in six District Health Care Facilities (DHCFs) in rural areas of the Mekong Delta provinces, Vietnam. The results showed that these services were available with inappropriate quality, which did not compromise the stakeholders' needs. The revealed WASH infrastructures have raised concerns about the prolonged hospital stays for patients and push nosocomial infections to a high level. The safety of the water supply was doubted as the high E. coli (> 60%) and total coliform incidence (86%) was observed with very low residual chlorine concentration (

SPRINGER2022

Paradigm-Shifting Players for IoT: Smart-Watches for Intensive Care Monitoring

Sandro Carrara, Giovanni De Micheli, Danilo Demarchi, Eleonora Lavalle, Francesca Stradolini

Wearable devices, e.g. smart-watches, are gaining popularity in many fields and in wellness monitoring too. In this paper we propose an IoT application to alert the medical doctor assigned to a critical unit by using a smart-watch. The wearable device improves the efficacy of monitoring patients at risk in hospital units allowing the medical doctor to access information at any time and from any place. A network was built to wirelessly connect bio-sensing platforms, which measure metabolites concentration in patients’ fluids (e.g. blood), with a dedicated application running on the smart-watch. In case of anomalous measured values, incoming alert notifications are received to ask urgent medical intervention. The main advantage of this new approach is that the doctors, or in general the caregivers, can freely move in the hospital other structures and perform other tasks meanwhile simultaneously and constantly monitoring all the patients thanks to the technology on their wrist.

2016

Characterisation of Hospital Wastewater: the Case of the CHUV

Laura Marie Blanc

2010