Consolidating the surveillance of five hospitals across two campuses, multiple clinics and child-care facilities into a unified Synergy surveillance solution will improve resilience while creating efficiencies and security enhancements for an NHS Foundation Trust.
Almost 900 IP cameras across the sites will be monitored from the control room, providing 24/7 coverage of the facilities. In addition, individual sites will have localised recording capabilities, with a failover server deployed at one site to ensure coverage continuity in the event of a major incident.
Enhanced surveillance capabilities
The new system will give the Trust security team access to enhanced surveillance capabilities such as dynamic mapping, which allows users to overlay camera locations with street maps and internal floor plans and secure real-time evidence sharing via a Cloud Evidence Locker. The latter will support efficient collaboration with local police – an essential factor for busy city hospitals.
The Trust will use BriefCam's video analytics technology through a Synergy integration. In addition to supporting day-to-day security monitoring, analytics will help with patient safety applications, such as locating lost or vulnerable patients without manually reviewing hours of footage.
Automatic number plate recognition will also form part of the new system, enabling the Trust to identify flagged vehicles, find witnesses and support the police with on-site incidents.
The surveillance solution will be one of the first in this sector to use the Synergy mobile app, enabling field-based personnel – for instance, security officers and maintenance staff – to receive and send updates supported by dynamic guidance workflows.
In addition to supporting the efficient fulfilment of scheduled security tasks and live incident management, Synergy also ensures all actions are automatically logged on the NHS incident management system, which is currently a manual process and, therefore, susceptible to error.
Scalable and future-proofed
A spokesperson at the NHS Foundation Trust commented: "Keeping people safe is our top priority, but we knew we couldn't do this effectively with an ageing surveillance network. So, when looking for a new system, we wanted something innovative to give us longevity.
"When we went out to tender, we were looking for a CCTV system, but we've ended up with so much more than that."
"Synergy will help us improve patient safety now and in the future. We're also looking forward to how it can improve patient care through integration with healthcare technology."
Brett Longley of Synectics said: "The NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest in the country. Synergy is ideally suited to the challenges accompanying projects of this scale and can integrate all the functionality the Trust needs.
"As well as providing ongoing training and support, we look forward to working with the Trust to implement further developments, including remote access applications and integrations with medical alarm systems."
How does an NHS Foundation Trust improve patient safety and hospital security with intelligent surveillance?
By implementing Synectics’ Synergy security and surveillance software, the NHS Foundation Trust achieved:
- Centralised monitoring of five hospitals, clinics, and child-care facilities across multiple campuses
- 24/7 surveillance coverage using nearly 900 IP cameras across healthcare sites
- Enhanced patient safety through video analytics and intelligent monitoring
- Faster identification of lost or vulnerable patients using video analytics search tools
- Dynamic mapping with integrated floor plans and live camera visualisation
- Secure cloud-based evidence sharing for faster collaboration with local police
- Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) for vehicle tracking and incident investigations
- Mobile access for field-based security and maintenance teams using the Synergy mobile app
- Workflow-driven incident management with real-time guidance and automated updates
- Improved operational efficiency through automated incident logging and reporting
- High-resilience surveillance infrastructure with failover protection and local recording
- Centralised video management across multiple healthcare environments
- Future-ready integration with medical alarms and healthcare technologies
- Scalable surveillance infrastructure designed to evolve with future patient safety requirements
- Smarter hospital security operations supporting staff, patients, and visitors
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