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Role of CO2 monitoring to manage ventilation effectiveness in hospital wards

Academic lead
Marco-Felipe King, Civil Engineering, M.F.King@leeds.ac.uk
Industrial lead
Ian Clifton, St James’ Hospital, i.clifton@nhs.net
Co-supervisor(s)
Martin Lopez-Garcia, Mathematics, M.LopezGarcia@leeds.ac.uk , Martin Lopez-Garcia, Maths, M.LopezGarcia@leeds.ac.uk Daniel Peckham, Medicine, D.G.Peckham@leeds.ac.uk , Cath Noakes, Civil Engineering, C.J.Noakes@leeds.ac.uk , Alex Edwards, Bristol University, Alexander.Edwards@bristol.ac.uk (External)
Project themes
Buildings & Cities, Computational & Analytical Tools, Data-driven methods, Health

Ventilation in healthcare environments is critical for the prevention and control of infection, however a substantial proportion of UK hospitals have inadequate ventilation. Over the past few years, the use of CO2 monitors as a proxy for ventilation has been widely recommended, but there is little application in healthcare environments and hence the evidence base to support their use is very limited.  

This project aims to use measured data from healthcare environments together with computational approaches to evaluate the potential for CO2 monitoring to be used to manage ventilation. The project will collect longitudinal and short time period intensive data including occupancy and behaviour to evaluate ventilation in different healthcare spaces. Computational models such as CONTAM or CFD, and data driven approaches can be used to identify key features that indicate good or poor ventilation and predict ventilation from time series changes in the data. The project is in partnership with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and has significant potential for impact on national policy.