Smart Flow Water Risk Management

Hospital tap water is a primary source of preventable healthcare acquired infections (HAI) however this invisible risk cannot be eliminated, only better managed. Legionella bacteria is naturally occurring in potable water and its survival is dependent on the operational management of the plumbing system. The dynamic nature of the complex water system infrastructure heightens these risks which are challenging for healthcare facility operators to manage without clear visibility of fixture usage, system performance, temperature circulation, and flow. The age and condition of existing hospital plumbing infrastructures further exacerbate these risks while providing scale if a suitable solution could be developed.

Smart flow® (WRM) provides health organisations with the service of monitoring the operational health of their water system, ensuring it complies with Health Policy directives and National Enhealth guidelines. The solution comprises a retro fittable IOT sensor network connected to a secure cloud-based platform where software intelligence and data analytics provide ongoing performance monitoring of the premise plumbing system. The web-based user interface, combined with Enware’s technical service team, ensure asset longevity, scald and bacterial risks are mitigated and resources better optimized. Smart flow® (WRMS) offers clients flexible payment schemes including subscription packages, leasing or capital purchase with managed services.

There are over 200,000 cases of HAIs every year in Australia costing the health system billions of dollars to manage. Both scalding and legionella risks to patients cannot be eliminated, only mitigated through proactive management of the premise plumbing water system. Smart flow® (WRM) provides hospitals with a trusted partner to share this critical responsibility, guiding performance management of the water system through greater visibility of the operational risks. On best practice manual management, Smart Flow reduces operational costs by 65%, reduces water and energy waste by approx. 30% and ensures patients safety while in the care of the facility.

The legislative need to provide monthly temperature readings for thermostatic mixing valves in healthcare settings inspired the initial Smart Flow technologies development to automate this highly laborious task. However the system soon expanded to monitor fixture stagnation, asset performance and circulating water temperature compliance due to increasing awareness of risks that healthcare building water systems pose to patient safety when contaminated with opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens. To ensure the system could be easily deployed into the 1400 existing hospitals across Australia, and not rely on new capital build development, Smart flow® (WRM) includes a wireless Lorawan Radio Frequency communication transmitter that delivers temperature and flow data from the extremities of the plumbing network to centralised gateway/s that sends it to a secure cloud platform. The retrofittable capabilities of the system enabled Smart flow® (WRM) to become a service model solution offering its true value to the end customers and users that need it most. Flexible payment methods ensures the Smart flow® (WRM) service offering aligns with operational budgets and can optimize costs through the development of analytics tools to provide clients with performance alerting and diagnostics to guide operational interventions that ensure the water delivery system remains safe.