printer friendly version

13 000 cameras under control

The hospital environment presents unique challenges to security. Mass General Hospital (MGH) has a 17-acre urban campus with 29 contiguous and 14 separate buildings (including underground and freestanding garage facilities). This is complex. Their security team must also take into account not only the main location, but also 13 satellite facilities around the Boston area.

Charged with creating a safe environment, MGH’s security team is at the same time challenged by the clinical teams’ needs for increased efficiency; lowering length of stay, moving patients through the hospital as quickly as possible. The 24-hour emergency room, with its anxious, highly volatile population, presents challenges of its own. In addition, patient elopement and wandering – unauthorised departures from the medical facility, whether intentional or unintentional – pose liability threats that can be very damaging to a hospital.

The MGH Police, Security and Outside Services Department provide security services to 13 Partners Healthcare facilities. Following a recent digital conversion, unified on the Milestone XProtect video management software (VMS) platform, the hospital’s security team achieved the ability to expand camera coverage and add new Axis network cameras to the existing IP network. With 13 000 cameras recording video 24/7, MGH was overwhelmed with video data, of which only a fraction was ever viewed.

A unified system was needed to balance the monitoring needs of a busy, big-city hospital campus with remote satellite locations while, at the same time, upholding the highest level of security possible, maintaining operational flow, and providing customer satisfaction that included expectations of privacy.

Milestone XProtect VMS platform was selected. Camera count was increased from 400 to 13 000 cameras, standardised on Axis network cameras connected directly to the IP network. To manage the increase in video data, MGH’s team chose BriefCam Syndex Pro, a set of synopsis tools designed to reduce the time and effort needed for video review, post-event video investigation and real-time video monitoring. The BriefCam solution ties in seamlessly with the Milestone video management solution, providing efficient workflow for investigators.

A 2-year long ROI examination of video use at MGH has shown a progressive rise in success rates with the use of surveillance in incident investigation. The solution’s ability to present video metadata in graphic visualisation format, such as bar graphs, pie charts and the like, has opened up new realms of possibilities to extend the role of video beyond security into organisational efficiency and more informed decision making.

Share this article:

Further reading: