I would say the biggest challenge we face is upgrading in areas that are quite sensitive, for example patient areas. Also making sure that we don’t get in the way. The exciting thing is that there are lots of opportunities, so if we can improve lighting in patient areas, that can only improve the healing process.

Our budget can accommodate change

We have a pretty comprehensive lighting upgrade programme across our two main acute care sites. We are investing upwards of £1 million ($1.5 million) in lighting at those hospitals. What we’ve done is to have an audit on their current lighting, and identified savings opportunities for a like-for-like change. But when we tender for the work – which we’ll be doing shortly – the idea is that we’ll be looking at everything, including biodynamic lighting.

We obviously have to see how we can work within the budget, but the wonderful thing about Guy’s and St Thomas’ is that it’s an organisation that thinks beyond direct paybacks.

Interestingly, the lighting project that we’re doing is part of a big energy-saving project that the trust is undertaking, so it’s about a £12 million ($17.8 million) overall investment in energy efficiency, and lighting comprises about a £1 million of that. What we’ve done is present the business case to the trust with a certain level of guaranteed savings. We’re doing an energy performance contract, so we have a partner that underwrites the savings. If it works within that budget and we get the savings back in, then they’re happy.

We want our patients to have control

I would love to do something creative in our patient areas, particularly on the care wards. We have a lot of patients that are in our wards for a significant amount of time, and lighting can be such an amazing healing factor. Conversely, the wrong lighting can be quite difficult for people, so it’s important that we get it right.

It gets exciting and interesting when you start to see how patients interact with light and how they can control it themselves and improve their stay while in hospital.

LEDs are our default choice now

We do all our own internal maintenance, and we are very strapped for resources. We have an in-house engineering team and they’ve got lots to do. We’re a quite complex, variously aged estate, so the more that we can remove from them maintaining the basics, the better. If we can put in lighting that’s going to stand the test of time, that’s so helpful for us and gives us resources to do other projects.

The guidance we have is: ‘If not LED, justify why not.’ In some areas, we’ve upgraded to T5 so the payback is quite slow. But for the most part, we are moving to LED where we can.

We want our patients to be involved

My proudest moment will be giving our patients the control to make sure that, whether they’re in their own room or whether they’re in a ward, they have the ability to control lighting to give them the best experience possible. And that it actually works, because if the light switch is on and it’s right above the bed and it’s shining right in their eyes, that’s not going to do anyone any good.

The other thing is that we really ought to involve our patients in the process. We want to do some trials and get people to say: ‘I like this, I don’t like this.’ We’ve got the funding, which is the big thing, and we’re tendering for lighting in the next couple of months. My job is to make sure it doesn’t become a like-for-like switch-out, which it could. In some areas it will. That’s the sensible thing to do in some areas, but in others we need to be more creative.

One of the things I really am pleased about is that we’ve introduced photocell-controlled lighting almost across the board. We’ve eliminated the areas where we have lights on and bright sunshine at the same time.

I’d like to see more transparency and standards

One thing that would be really helpful with LEDs is more transparency in the way they’re manufactured and the quality. There’s still an element of having to go to the right supplier, the right manufacturer, the right… and that, I think, adds a premium to the likes of Philips.

But I also think that manufacturers could really help standardise. When we build a new ward, there’s a standard set-up for a hospital bed. It’s the number of plugs around the bed. It’s where the table goes, it’s where the lighting goes to a certain extent. It’s where the patient entertainment system is, and it’s a kind of standard thing, so we don’t recreate it every single time we do a new ward. It would be really good if there were a sort of standard set of principles that we could apply to patient areas. That would help us reduce the design costs, and to just get things done.

Novel Energy Lighting has supplied LED lighting for several NHS trust lighting upgrades. We have the expertise to work with hospital specifiers, survey buildings, and deliver quality LED goods with 5 year warranties. Call us today to discuss: Tel: 0208-540-8287

At first glance the statement seems to pass the common sense test. I didn’t start to really question it until I left a retrofit LED bulb switched on to test in the garage for six months, during which time the diffuser accumulated a significant number of corn flies. If there’s no UV, what is it about LEDs that’s so irresistible to insects?

The search for truth

Spend a little time trawling the internet and you will quickly unearth a wealth of articles, reports and anecdotes on UV light, insects and LEDs, frequently contradicting each other and sometimes with a strong smell of snake oil about them.

A few calls to the Royal Entomological Society put me on a clearer track, and I was directed to some useful papers on insects and light. Perhaps the most pertinent was undertaken in 2005 at the University of Agriculture in Faisalabad, Pakistan, titled ‘Insect orientation to various colour lights in the agricultural biomes of Faisalabad’.

The research was carried out by erecting a number of illuminated one metre-square screens in two separate locations, each six metres apart, and collecting the insects that became trapped on each panel at half-hourly intervals.

The study found that 60-70 per cent of insects preferred light at the blue end of the spectrum. But that doesn’t mean the others stayed at home – insects, as it turns out, have a wide variety of preferences. Eighteen per cent headed for a white light, another eight to 10 per cent went for yellow and two per cent headed straight for the red light district.

This is all very interesting, but what if you’re the only light in town? Little research has been carried out in the area of general lighting, and more specifically LED. Given a choice between no light and a white light, do insects give up and go home, or do they ­fly merrily around your head, laughing at your feeble LED fittings and making the occasional landing on your neck to suck your blood?

Bugged out

After the success of the North Yorkshire garage LED trial, I took the opportunity to extend the study to my brand new LED-lit kitchen. Leaving the doors open last week, I can report that the local midges are more than happy to hang around on a wall under an LED downlight, where they are soon joined by a selection of moths and ­flies.

“It appears that insects, like humans, have quite complex and diverse tastes in lighting, and may well spend hours debating the colour rendering of a dung heap under different sources”

And with lower levels of radiated heat than traditional light sources, they are far less likely to get burned in the process. It’s only a matter of time before word gets around in the insect community about this cool new hangout.

It appears that insects, like humans, have quite complex and diverse tastes in lighting, and may well spend hours debating the colour rendering of a dung heap under different sources.

But, also like humans, they’ll make do with what light there is. I’m sure the option of hanging around in a dimly-lit Starbucks and divebombing freshly-made cappuccinos is preferable to the risk of being spattered across a truck windscreen on the M25 while trying to find a nice, white HID lamp.

So next time Snake Oil Bob drops in to hawk his wares on the basis of their anti-bug properties, send him packing with an LED torch to Faisalabad, and he can explain to the local insects himself that it doesn’t emit any UV – if they’ll stop biting him for long enough to listen.

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