© 2022 Stevens Van Dijck
Design: Flinder | Web development: Kroes Media
Assignments are accepted and performed in accordance with the general terms and conditions of The New Arrangement 2011 revised version 2013.
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The academic hospital organizations VU University Medical Center (VUmc) and Amsterdam Medical Center (AMC) closely collaborate and merged in June 2018. Since then, they operate under the name Amsterdam University Medical Center (AUMC).
One of the manifestations of this collaboration is the realization of a new and highly modern hospital pharmacy. This pharmacy is located on the ground floor of AUMC, Boelelaan location in Amsterdam. In the new pharmacy, medicines are fully automated in production, storage, and distribution. The key theme in this automation is the use of advanced robots to control and optimize the regular processes of the pharmacy. The pharmacy is divided into a publicly accessible area and a cleanroom area.
In the general area, there are the visitor’s desk, office and meeting rooms, as well as facilities for the dispensing of medicines. In the cleanroom area, medicines are produced under controlled conditions. Controlled conditions refer to monitoring and influencing the air quality and prevailing air pressure in the rooms belonging to the cleanroom area. The cleanroom area is not accessible to anyone other than pharmacists, and entry is only controlled through an airlock and dressing room.
The new hospital pharmacy is part of a larger series of consecutive projects within the hospital complex. The interconnectedness of these construction projects means that predetermined start and completion dates must be met to avoid delaying subsequent construction projects. In other words, delays in the sequence of successive construction projects will lead to a future lack of capacity to treat seriously ill patients. And patient treatment is the core business of AUMC.
Stevens Van Dijck has provided management for this project.
The cleanroom area is literally the center of the pharmacy and is surrounded by access areas. Only authorized pharmacy staff members are allowed to enter the cleanroom area through a conditioned dressing room.
Within the cleanroom area, there are production spaces for the pharmacy. Two robots are installed in the cytostatic rooms for the automated production of medicines. Additionally, several fume hoods are set up in the cytostatic room for pharmacists to manually produce medicines.
The VTGM (Verifying, Testing, Weighing, and Measuring) rooms are also located within the cleanroom area. In these rooms, the produced medicines are prepared for use by patients within the hospital, including the calculation of active substance doses. The medicines are then stored in the quarantine area, which is situated outside the cleanroom area.
From the quarantine area, the medicines are prepared for the storage and management using the therapick robot (robot for packaging and managing medicines). The magazijnrobot (warehouse robot) takes care of the storage and, finally, the distribution of medicines to the patients in the hospital.
An important focus during the realization of the pharmacy was ensuring that walls, frames, and ceilings within the cleanroom area are tested and demonstrably airtight. Only by creating and maintaining positive pressure in all areas of the cleanroom can we ensure that air cannot infiltrate from surrounding spaces into the cleanroom area, preventing contamination or infection of the conditioned air present there.
Another crucial point of concern is the cleanability of the floor, walls, ceiling, and the integrated features such as switches, wall sockets, lighting fixtures, access points, smoke detectors, etc. All edges, seams, and gaps in walls and ceilings, as well as those around the connections of the built-in installation components, must be made cleanable or ‘flush’ finished.
Specifically, flush finishing means that protruding edges and/or open gaps must be covered or avoided. In cases where it was unavoidable in the hospital pharmacy, gaps between ceiling panels and connections of installation components to surrounding walls and ceilings were sealed using caulking. Flush detailing is a crucial aspect of designing and constructing cleanroom buildings.
© PHOTOGRAPHY:
© 2022 Stevens Van Dijck
Design: Flinder | Web development: Kroes Media
Assignments are accepted and performed in accordance with the general terms and conditions of The New Arrangement 2011 revised version 2013.
