This Health Technical Advice (HTA-2020-004) provides guidance to health agency staff and engineers on the types of isolation rooms available and the patients they are best suited for. This includes guidance on when an isolation room should be used for a COVID-19 patient.

In many health care facilities, patients who are known to or suspected of posing a risk of transmitting certain infectious micro-organisms are physically isolated from other persons.

Physical isolation ceases when the patient is no longer capable of transmitting infection or an alternative diagnosis is made.

The document also provides links to additional technical resources on the design and usage of isolation rooms.

This Health Technical Advice includes:

• What is an isolation room?
• How does an isolation room work?
• What are the key components of an isolation room?
• When is an isolation room to be used for a COVID-19 patient?
• What guidance is available on isolation rooms?
   

Please note: This document has been prepared as a guide and for information purposes only. No legal obligation for any loss, damage or expense is incurred by any person relying on the information provided.

This guidance note details the technical specification required for the capture and reporting of on-site solar data via online environmental data management systems (EDMS).

The installation of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems is common practice during the construction and expansion of healthcare capital projects, as well as retrofitting on existing healthcare facilities.

The Victorian Health Building Authority requires:

• automated capture of nett generation data from on-site solar PV systems
• reporting into the online EDMS regardless of how the solar PV system is funded.

This reporting is configured through the inverter. Inverters installed after 2015 should have the capability to meet the requirements. Where older inverters do not have the capability to meet the requirements, reporting can be delayed until the inverter is replaced.

This guidance note includes:

• Step 1: inform VHBA of your solar PV system details
• Step 2: setting up solar array on the EDMS
• Step 3: configure the inverter(s) to export data
  • transmission methodology
  • example of a seven-day extract
  • emailing exported data
  • example of data extraction methods
• Step 4: test data upload and reporting

A Word format version of these guidelines is available upon request from edms@dhhs.vic.gov.au.

Learn more about environmental sustainability in healthcare via our dedicated resources page.