Medilink

Reducing infection rates, costs and thier carbon footprint – Inditherm plc has been honoured with a national award recognising their contribution to dramatically cutting NHS costs, improving patient care, reducing energy use and clinical waste.

Announced at the Community Partnerships Awards 2010, Inditherm won the ‘Suppliers Delivering Sustainability’ category. Judged by senior Department of Health and NHS managers, the award acknowledges their contribution to making the highest standards of care financially viable and environmentally more sustainable.

Already used in many NHS hospitals, Inditherm’s innovative patient warming systems are helping to address the problem of hypothermia during surgery. Effective warming during anaesthesia is widely recognised in helping to reduce blood loss, infection rates, recovery times and even mortality.

As the NHS works to comply with NICE guidelines on preventing perioperative hypothermia, expenditure on traditional disposable warming products in the NHS has nearly doubled in the last year. Figures published by NICE suggest that patient warming costs could be reduced by well over £10 million annually if use of the Inditherm system was extended to all UK hospitals.

The award also acknowledged the environmental advantages of Inditherm’s patented carbon polymer technology over traditional forced air warming, which could save the NHS more than
3,000 MWh of energy and reduce clinical waste by over 200 tonnes each year.

Speaking after the event, Inditherm plc Chief Executive, Nick Bettles, said: “The award clearly recognises the contribution our patient warming systems can offer to hospitals. This shows that Inditherm technology offers the perfect solution to reduce costs whilst helping meet NICE guidelines and saving the environment; this must be attractive to the NHS is the current economic climate.”