Modernisations tips to get your lifts working at their very best. From A to B swiftly and safely. That’s what patients and doctors expect from lifts in healthcare facilities. Here’s how to Modernise your lifts and create the best experience.
If you watch the medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, you know that the lifts played an important role to create scenes of intense excitement in the series and entire articles have been written about the role the lifts played in the series. In reality, a patient’s lift journey should be drama-free and effortless.
In this piece, we look at five ways of modernising your healthcare lifts to make sure it stays that way:
In healthcare environments, every second counts. Medical staff rely on fast and reliable lifts when transporting ill or injured patients. It’s vital to update the lift equipment in your healthcare facilities before things start to go wrong.
Here’s how you can get the most from your lift modernisation.
In a hospital or healthcare facility, you need to minimise wait times and keep people moving through the building smoothly. But when you take a lift out of service for modernisation, you increase the pressure on the remaining lifts. A destination dispatch system solves this problem.
A destination dispatch system, such as Schindler’s PORT Technology, works best when the system has more than three lifts. Passengers are directed to a lift based on their desired destination, allowing the system to reduce the number of stops and get people to their floor faster. You can install a destination dispatch system before you start your lift modernisation. Then, when you take one lift out of service, the others pick up the slack. Once your modernisation is finished, you continue to see the benefits of improved efficiency and traffic flow.
In a healthcare setting, you need lifts you can manage easily, even during the busiest times. A new controller gives you that flexibility, allowing you to include functions like reservation for cleaning, special and preferential control. Code Blue is an extremely useful function that should be included in all healthcare lift systems. It overrides any existing calls, giving priority to emergency situations.
The latest controllers also monitor your equipment and detect even small drops in performance. This allows your lift service provider to find potential problems before they cause a breakdown of your equipment. In some cases, they can even service the lift remotely to minimise the number of people in the building.
Safety and comfort are two of the most important requirements of any lift, but especially a lift in a healthcare facility. By modernising your lifts, you can improve the experience for all users.
New landing doors help your lifts meet the highest safety standards. Previously, single photocell sensors were commonly used to detect obstacles. These systems work, but they’re not very sensitive. Today, a light curtain is the norm. Sensors are placed around the door so that even the smallest obstacle can be detected.
For injured patients or those recovering from surgery, lift vibrations can feel particularly jarring. New machines featuring Suspension Traction Media (STM) make the journey smoother. Meanwhile, upgraded systems offer passengers a quieter ride and improved stopping accuracy.
One of the biggest challenges in a hospital is minimising the risk of patients developing secondary infections. Lifts are among the busiest areas in a hospital–places where pathogens can be transmitted between patients - so it’s extremely important to be able to clean them quickly and easily.
COVID has caused a leap forward in lift sanitation technology. Solutions, such as Schindler CleanMobility products, help to eliminate bacteria and viruses on lift surfaces and reduce the physical contact a passenger needs to have with buttons. When a lift is empty, UV lights disinfect the air and surfaces inside the car. Sensor technology and QR codes can now be used to call a lift, so there’s no need to press buttons. These innovations were developed to address the concerns of passengers during the pandemic but, in the longer-term, they will remain effective solutions for hospitals too.
Stainless steel fixtures and panels also make it simple to sanitise your lift cars. You can also install bumper rails to protect the lifts from damage caused by stretchers and wheelchairs accidentally hitting the walls. You can fix bumper rails at different heights and select from stainless steel, PVC or wood, depending on your needs.
The final, but by no means least important, benefit of modernising your lifts is improved reliability. It’s an obvious fact that replacing worn-out components reduces the chance of breakdowns.What’s more, new technology, like the Schindler Ahead service, allows you to continually monitor the performance of your lifts. Sensors installed in the lift system find potential problems so your service provider can fix them before a breakdown occurs.
If you’re planning to modernise the lifts in a healthcare facility, there will be challenges to overcome. But, with the right provider and plan in place, these can be managed easily. The solutions we’ve explored in this piece are all designed to help your modernisation run smoothly. By making use of the latest technology, you can make sure your lifts perform their best and the lift drama stays on TV.
There’s no reason to leave your healthcare lifts in the past.