Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital is the premiere tertiary acute care hospital in Windsor-Essex County, Ontario, Canada. Combining a century old tradition of compassionate care with cutting edge diagnostic imaging technology, Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital leads the provision of advanced care in the areas of complex trauma, renal dialysis, acute mental health, advanced cardiac care, stroke and neurosurgical care and the broad foundation of medical and surgical services required to support these areas of specialization.
Business objective
Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital needed a security system that would allow personnel to immediately reach out to security in an emergency situation, regardless of the employee's location on the four-acre campus. The hospital was looking to satisfy a host of different security concerns, including staff walking to their cars late at night and the overall safety of employees, particularly when dealing with psychiatric patients and in the public access areas of the Emergency Room.
Solution - secure Escort system
The hospital is using Security Escort, a wireless system that uses a pendant to send emergency signals, to give employees the ability to signal an immediate "code white" to hospital security staff. Once the software receives an emergency signal, the pendant transmits a signal every seven seconds, enabling the system to track the location and direction of movement of the user. The console operator uses this constantly updated information to direct security personnel to the scene.
For regular hospital personnel, the Security Escort System only tracks their location after an alarm has been activated. Security officers are outfitted with a man down transmitter, which constantly reports their location at all times during their shift. If an individual becomes unconscious or is in a horizontal position for longer than the predetermined time, the system will send an alarm to the central monitoring console. This feature enables the hospital's security manager and his staff to monitor the activity of security officers at any time during a particular shift. Another critical factor in the installation was integrating the system with the existing CCTV infrastructure. Because of that interface, the hospital's 90-camera surveillance system - a mixture of Bosch domes and fixed units, DVRs and a Bosch 8600 series matrix switch -- provides video coverage of the location of an alarm. That video is also visible to security staff through the central monitoring console.
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| Bosch installed security escort, a wireless emergency system, at Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital |
Result
"The use of the pendant for the Security Escort system has become mandatory for all employees of the hospital -- close to 2,200 staff members -- as part of our Occupational Health and Safety Policy. Now, the system covers every inch of the hospital and provides protection whether employees are in a parking garage or other high-risk areas of the hospital," said Wally Dowhayko, security manager for Hotel Dieu Grace Hospital. Dowhayko is considering additional uses for the Security Escort system to increase the hospital's return on investment, including utilising the system's ability to track objects as an asset protection device.
