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Harnessing green power to run new Surgical Hub

Green energy is helping to power Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) new specialist Surgical Hub, with an innovative approach that will help cut carbon emissions.

Four heat pumps on the roof of the Cambridge Movement Surgical Hub
Three large heat pump modules are part of a sophisticated system providing green energy to Cambridge Movement Sugical Hub

A sophisticated system of photovoltaic solar panels and heat pumps has been installed in the Cambridge Movement Surgical Hub to provide the domestic hot water, heating and the cooling for the entire building

This, alongside other measures including reducing single use plastics, a sophisticated restocking and ordering system ensuring that nothing is wasted, and a pilot study to use reusable surgical gowns are part of helping CUH reduce its impact on the planet.

The Hub specialises in orthopaedic surgery and has been built to help cut waiting lists for routine orthopaedic operations – such as knee and hip replacements – and create a new surgical centre of excellence.

Two men wearing yellow high-viz looking at computer panel
A unique, locally built, computer-controlled electronics system manages the heating and cooling.

The technology that heats and cools the building combines solar roof panels and the power of three large heat pump modules with unique computer-controlled electronics – all built locally.

Solar power is a renewable energy source that produces no harmful greenhouse gas emissions in operation.

The on-board computer-controlled power electronics provide the essential balancing between heating and cooling – designed to deliver both high efficiency and resilience across all weather conditions.

CUH energy and sustainability manager, Richard Hales, explains:

The hub’s heating and cooling system has been built with energy efficiency at its heart.

Adding: "The system is innovative not just for its practical modularity and direct connection to approximately 80kW of roof-mounted clean solar energy, but also the way the whole system is managed sets it apart.”

During summer time when the sun is really shining, we’re hoping that this whole unit will be running significantly off those panels.”

Cambridge Movement Surgical Hub explained by Fred Robinson, Clinical Lead

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbEJqpl99aA

Video transcript

This is a concept that we came up with about 15 years ago, and what we're trying to do orthopedically is get people back to normal life, improve their movement, get their mobility back and very importantly, remove their pain.

During COVID, there's been a huge increase in the number of patients waiting surgical treatment, and that's particularly hit orthopedics.

This isn't just going to do hip replacement and knee replacement, we're doing all aspects of orthopedic surgery, and our spinal colleagues from neurosurgery are going to come and do some spinal surgery as well.

So it’s going to allow us to treat patients throughout the year, which is very exciting.

We have a workstation on wheels.

We also have handheld devices which the nurses can carry around.

We can scan patients’ wristbands, ensuring that we are administering drugs to the right patient at the right time.

Some workstations are wall mounted in the corridors, so you can get enough people around the devices to have a good discussion around the patient without being in the patient's room.

There's a pre-admission area where you'll see the anaesthetist surgeon on the morning of surgery.

We're obviously sitting in one of the three theaters which are the next section through.

Then got a recovery area with four beds for slightly sicker patients, an enhanced recovery area.

Then there's a corridor that goes up, and there you’ve got physiotherapy, occupational therapy and radiology, so you can get your X-rays, and then coming back down we've got 40 beds, in two wards, each with individual cubicles.

And at the end of that you've got a discharge lounge and then patients, maybe even as soon as the day of surgery, day after surgery, will leave the hub and go home.

The new hub has allowed us to bring forward some really innovative energy efficiency measures. We've installed a set of heat pumps on the roof, and they're connected to solar panels that provide renewable energy for part of the time to those heat pumps.

In the summer, there’s a very good chance that that building will be running entirely, for its heating and its cooling from energy from the sun.

The Trust was the first in the country to use this innovative, integrated and locally developed technology when it installed a similar system in the Rosie Maternity Hospital in 2021.

The learning from the Rosie Hospital project has now been fed into the Cambridge Movement Surgical Hub’s more extensive and much bigger system.

For Fred Robinson, consultant orthopaedic surgeon and clinical lead for the Hub, this green thinking is hugely important. He said:

I’m very keen that we are genuinely on a trajectory to net zero. I think we all feel that’s very important. Because, as we know, healthcare contributes around 5% to the country’s carbon emissions, so the more we can reduce that, the better for us all.

Reducing the carbon emissions that the Trust has direct control over is a crucial element of CUH’s Action 50 Green Plan.

The trust has set the target of halving its carbon emissions by 2032, (from a 2019/20 baseline) and become a net-zero organisation by 2045.

This includes measures to reduce direct carbon emissions through how we manage our buildings and services, and saving resources by reusing, repairing and recycling wherever possible.

Next year, a state-of-the-art solar panel project which will supply renewable energy to Addenbrooke's and the Rosie Hospitals will be coming online. This is situated at Babraham Road Park and Ride, and will reduce CUH’s electrical carbon footprint by approximately 400 tonnes per year.

Cambridge Children's and Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital
Artist's impressions of the Cambridge Children's Hospital (top) and Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital (bottom).

The specialist children and cancer hospitals for the East of England - Cambridge Children’s Hospital and Cambridge Cancer Research Hospital – being planned for the Cambridge Biomedical Campus, will be low carbon and electric powered facilities, both designed to ensure maximum natural light and access to outdoor spaces, as part of the Trust’s plan to help deliver a net zero NHS.