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Customer satisfaction nurtures long and innovative partnership with Italian hospital

Integrating information supports improved life safety and building management – and frees-up resources for better patient care.

Italy's Ospedale San Carlo Borromeo Milano is working hard to achieve outstanding levels of performance in everything it does. Efficient, cost-effective building management is fundamental to this. As well as providing mission-critical 24x7x365 infrastructure, money saved here frees up resources for the real job in hand - better patient care.

The customer

Ospedale San Carlo Borremeo Milano is the biggest and busiest hospital in Lombardy, Northern Italy. A health services and treatment centre, it serves a catchment area of 800 000 people. Opened in the 1960s, it underwent huge expansion in the late 1990s. It is striving to establish itself as a centre of excellence for acute and emergency treatments.

The issue

In the interest of improved life safety management and risk mitigation, the hospital wanted to make its campus a safer place. It also wanted to integrate life safety with its existing building management systems.

Well aware of the value of being able to collect data from multiple points, integrate it and distribute it, the customer sought to extend this capability. It wanted to link this latest improvement with its existing (Honeywell) building management solution. It knew that by enabling the two functions to 'talk to' each other, patients, staff and visitors - regardless of their whereabouts on site - would get the best-possible protection in an emergency.

Because funding for building management reform competes with resources to support the hospital's quest to become a centre of medical excellence, any investment in new technology also had to deliver cost savings and productivity gain.

San Carlo Borromeo turned to Honeywell Building Solutions to help solve this dilemma.

The solution

Honeywell Italy integrated a life safety management application. This links primary monitoring and full control of the hospital's life safety systems - smoke and fire detection, sprinkler supervision and emergency communications - with the existing (Honeywell) building management solution masterminding HVAC, realtime energy management and preventative maintenance and from this, patient comfort. Whilst each application manages a particular facet of the building's operation, integration ensures they work together if necessary.

This latest upgrade shows the customer's satisfaction with Honeywell technology. What started out as a standalone energy management solution (Honeywell XBS) has been seamlessly upgraded; first to a campus-wide building management solution and now to a fully integrated building management tool optimising life safety and automation control.

The outcome

San Carlo Borromeo is now a safer place - for patients, staff and visitors alike.

Systems integration optimises life safety and building management. Improved productivity is supported by faster, more effective crisis management. Not only does this help the hospital meet EU health and safety regulations, it reduces risk.

Energy consumption and maintenance costs have also fallen. The focus on trend logging and preventative maintenance supports Facility Management's drive to adopt more proactive energy strategies. It has also improved alarm management by giving operators the information they need to ensure a prompt and effective response. The hospital is enjoying increased plant uptime and energy savings without detriment to service provision.

Says Susanna Azzini, facility manager and technical director, "Previous experience verified the robustness and reliability of Honeywell technology - as well as its ease of use. We also knew that we could rely on timely - and local - aftersales service.

"We also like the modularity of Honeywell solutions. Because Honeywell uses open systems architecture, it can integrate with third-party devices. This allows us to add new features as and when needs and budgets allow. This flexibility protects our investment long term."

Key benefits:

* Improved safety of patients and staff.

* Effective crisis management.

* Risk mitigation.

* Enterprise integration.

* Energy savings.

* Increased plant up-time.

* Cost effective building management.

* IPerformance gain.

* Open systems architecture.

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