Hospital Bed Elevators

A hospital lift is specified around a single scenario: a patient on a bed, with an attendant at the head, another at the foot, an IV stand, a monitor and an oxygen cylinder, all needing to move to theatre without anything being unplugged. That dictates a deep, narrow car rather than a square one, and it dictates a door wide enough to take a bed square-on without manoeuvring.

Levelling accuracy is a clinical requirement, not a comfort one. A car that stops even fifteen millimetres out will jolt a trolley as its wheels cross the sill, which is unacceptable with a post-operative patient aboard. Our hospital units level to within a few millimetres and re-level automatically as the car is loaded and unloaded, so the sill stays flush while a bed is being wheeled across it.

Interior surfaces are chosen so they can be cleaned properly. Stainless steel with an antibacterial coating, coved and welded internal corners with no dirt-trapping joints, and handrails on three sides for patients who are walking. Door protection uses a full-height infrared curtain rather than a mechanical safety edge, so nothing physically pushes against a bed or a patient.

Emergency behaviour is specified with the hospital's engineering department. On mains failure the car completes its journey to the nearest floor on battery, and on generator changeover a nominated set of lifts is brought back into service first. Priority-call operation lets clinical staff take direct command of a car with a key switch, and fireman's service is provided where the building code requires it.