Series 3 design and surgical isolation panels at Clínica La Sabana

Operating-theatre isolation panels are the most neglected item in a clinic and the one that weighs most heavily in a licensing audit. Clínica La Sabana needed them brought up to date and, in parallel, an electrical design that required utility permitting, plus an understanding of what was happening with power quality across the facility.

In an operating theatre, the electrical system is not designed to shut off when a fault appears but to keep running and raise an alarm. That is what an isolated power system does: if a first earth fault occurs, the monitor flags it but the theatre carries on. It is the exact opposite of the logic of a domestic breaker.

That behaviour depends on the panel being in good condition and on the line isolation monitor working. And because the system is designed to tolerate the first fault without showing it, a degraded panel can go years without visible signs until the second one occurs. That is why periodic thermographic inspection, carried out with the panel under load, is the only practical way to know its real condition.