What you will get at the new MUHC

The Glen site will be a cutting-edge academic health centre filled with the latest and most modern equipment to improve both workflow and the delivery of care to patients. Among these innovative features—and probably the most impressive—is the pneumatic tube system. 

Hidden in the walls of the Glen, the pneumatic tubes will be the veins of the Glen site. With an estimated 5,000 transactions per day, they will carry blood, medication and emergency medical items to our medical professionals. According to Frank Vieira, Associate Director, Finance, MUHC, "Since the Glen is so large, materials sometimes have to travel distances of 1,000 feet and many stories up or down. Pneumatic tubes will help quickly deliver critical items, medicine and even blood, which is extremely important in a tertiary and quaternary care institution." 

Users can also program the pneumatic tube system to prioritize certain capsules that need to be received or analyzed fast—the system can then slow the progress of all other deliveries to prioritize a specific one. Only authorized personnel will be able to use the pneumatic tube system. 

"Together with our hard-working porters, the pneumatic tubes will help ensure that care is delivered quickly and that workflow, from the lab to the emergency department to the patient's bedside, is as efficient as possible," concludes Vieira. 

Interesting facts about the pneumatic tube system

• A capsule in the pneumatic tube system can travel 20 feet per second, which is a little over 20 km/h.
• The size of a capsule is similar to that of a 2-litre plastic bottle.
• Capsules that go into the system are tagged using a radio-frequency identification (RFID) system and can therefore be tracked. This means that capsules can't get lost, as personnel will be able to track their progress at all times. They can also be returned automatically to their sending stations after delivery.