Against a background of significant budget cuts and a demographic shift towards an aging population (in the Western world life expectancy is approximately seven years higher than it was 50 years ago), a major challenge for the healthcare sector is to reduce costs without compromising on the quality of treatment and care.
Integration is fast becoming the watchword in healthcare as it is in many industries when it comes to building solutions. Whether it is a hospital, an out-patients department or a care institution, the wellbeing of patients, staff, and visitors has to be catered for. This involves not only the supply of all forms of energy and climate control, but also the provision of security and fire protection. It is not unusual for a large hospital to have up to 100 different medical and building technology systems installed.
The majority of these systems are monitored, operated, and managed separately. In addition, many systems have their own company- or industry-specific standards and protocols, resulting in high costs of installation and operation. The drives for greater efficiency have lead to an increasing number of hospitals focusing on integrated systems, using intelligent networking to allow them to communicate with one another, as a vital contributor to achieving such efficiencies.
Orbis Medisch Centrum
An example of how hospitals are meeting these challenges through the adoption of integrated technology is demonstrated by the Orbis Medisch Centrum, opened earlier this year in the Dutch city of Sittard and christened the ‘Hospital of the 21stCentury'. The goal here is to address head on the challenges alluded to earlier, namely reducing hospital expenditure while offering excellent patient care. The expectation of the hospital's management team is that they will offer healthcare services at rates approximately 10 percent lower than in traditional hospitals but in an environment that appears more like a first class hotel than a hospital.
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| The interaction between security, fire, and building comfort increases safety in a sustainable way |
Siemens technology has enabled the entire hospital complex to be networked, including identity and access control management, IP networks and VoIP (Voice over IP) telephony, the digitizing of all incoming mail, integration of bedside patient terminals and workplace virtualization. Orbis Medisch Centrum is the first nearly paperless hospital in Europe, with electronic patient files and state-of-the-art document management.
In security terms, tracking of patients is becoming an ever-increasing focus. Abductions of babies have been the incidents that have tended to grab the media headlines but in an aging population, the inevitable increased incidences of dementia means that keeping track of elderly patients is also a priority. The RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system employed at the Orbis Medisch Centrum is used to track people (Siemens also offer the opportunity to track assets). On being admitted to the hospital, patients receive a ‘tag' wristband which features a built-in transmitter. Readers installed on the ceilings and alongside exits report the location and identity of each transmitter to a central server. This system is being used in two departments within the hospital. In the area devoted specifically to the care of the elderly, doors are automatically locked when a patient approaches the door, thus ensuring that any patient suffering from disorientation does not leave their area of care, get lost or leave the hospital unsupervised. In the hospital's psychiatric department, protection is also afforded by the system's room location feature.
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| The Orbis Medisch Centrum complex is networked through Siemens technology |
The security and fire systems at the hospital are also integrated through a Siemens danger management system located in the hospital's command centre. The early and reliable fire detection, along with tailored extinguishing solutions, is all supplied by Siemens. In an emergency, patients, visitors and personnel can be directed from the hazard area to an exit outside of the fire/incident zone by means of visual indicators and loudspeaker announcements. In addition, the floors most affected can be evacuated first, followed by less critical areas. It is important that in an emergency situation, the access control system can be adapted accordingly. Complex access patterns have to allow staff to access the rooms required to carry out their work. The access patterns are multifaceted and often dependent on the time of day: for example, a technician requires access to different rooms than a cleaning operative. However, in exceptional cases such as a fire, it must be possible to change the complex access patterns within seconds to allow for safe evacuation of all persons - without breaching data protection or secure access to medicines.
Benefits for the whole building life cycle
Operators, owners, and tenants of healthcare buildings can use system integration through open system architecture to achieve significant synergy benefits and to reduce costs throughout the entire building life cycle.
The advantages of interaction between different functions and systems in a building are numerous, a primary one being the availability of all the necessary information at the location required. The intelligent interaction between security, fire and building comfort reduces the number of manual interventions required, it increases comfort and safety, and it provides the means to achieve sustained energy optimization.
