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Lakeridge Health moves to multi-site surveillance

By re-using much of the analogue equipment Lakeridge has managed to keep much of its original investment. Lakeridge Health is one of the largest integrated hospital networks in Ontario, formed in the late 90’s when four hospital campuses were brought together into one unified group. They soon realized that IP Video technology was the only way to build an integrated surveillance system across their campuses. The IT department was fully supportive of this move and in preparation built an optimized virtual network in 2004. The network can support over 1,000 cameras without interference with other network functions and has fully redundant power supplies, switches, routers and firewalls. All along AC Technical Systems, IndigoVision’s authorized partner and a provider of IP solutions, worked with Lakeridge to develop their security monitoring facilities and in 2007 the first of the cameras were migrated to the IP video system.
 
“The choice of IP video vendor was thus very important,” explains James Ramsey, the manager for security, emergency preparedness and worksafe at Lakeridge Health, “Our IT team put incredible time and energy into creating a state of the art network infrastructure, so we would expect nothing less than the best in an IP video system. No manufacturer understands that better than IndigoVision.”
 
Since 2007, 250 fixed and PTZ cameras have been added to the IP Video system across the four sites, including 144 cameras from the original system in the main Oshawa hospital complex. A further 46 cameras will be added over the next few months. Two of the other hospital sites are still using the existing DVR analogue equipment, but they will also be migrating across to the IP video system in the future.
 
As IndigoVision’s system is fully distributed any component can be located at any point on the network, including workstations running IndigoVision’s ‘Control Center’ Security Management Software. These workstations are used by operators to view and analyze both live and recorded video from any camera at any site. As ‘Control Center’ is licensed on an unrestricted basis within the cost of IndigoVision’s hardware, Lakeridge Health has been able to deploy multiple workstations across the group for no additional cost. In addition to the central monitoring facility at Oshawa, workstations are also located in various departments and at numerous nurse stations, where their access is limited to live view of local cameras.
 
“The ability to place video workstations in different departments has been of great benefit to us,” added Ramsey. “The Parking Services department located at Oshawa Hospital used to rely on an intercom to communicate with the other sites, now they can monitor and manage all of the group’s parking lots and unmanned gates from a single workstation. It’s also much easier to track missing equipment and locate wandering patients.”
 
Video is continuously recorded from all cameras on IndigoVision’s standalone Network Video Recorders (NVRs) for up to 45 days. Evidential quality video clips can be exported for police use in the event of an incident.
 
Future plans for the IP video system include integration with the on-site Lenel access control system and deploying IndigoVision’s Video Wall software in the central monitoring facility. Using IndigoVision’s integration module, the access control system can be seamlessly integrated across the IP network, with an alarm in one system triggering events in the other. This leads to more efficient security management and quicker incident response. IndigoVision’s Video Wall software is based on ‘Control Center’ and allows professional fully-featured control room video walls to be built to any size, at a fraction of the cost of other dedicated display products.
 
Guy DiGiorgio, senior account manager at AC Technical Systems, said, “AC Technical Systems is pleased to be the partner of choice to deliver Lakeridge Health Corporation’s integrated security and surveillance solution. This system was specifically designed to meet the challenging requirements of this unique environment both now, and for the future. We look forward to working with IndigoVision and our technology partners in driving industry insight and adoption of easy-to-use, cutting-edge IP solutions that provide our enterprise customers with more choices and value with respect to video surveillance technology.”