Page 58 - Security Today, May/June 2020

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time, who may be at a remote location.
“Remote video offers a great level of efficiency for our care providers
because they don’t have to leave the hospital and go to another location, they have the ability to provide guidance to the ultrasound technician remotely,” Summanen said. “It’s another tool that we can provide to our associates and to our clinical staff to help them connect with families and provide better care more quickly.”
Cardiac Unit Benefits from Video
Another use of video has been deployed with the cardiac unit, which encodes every physiological monitor in the cardiac unit with the information integrated on the VMS displays. This function allows cardiac intensivists to monitor patients around the clock. With remote connectivity through the Milestone XProtect Smart Client, cardiologists at home or traveling can quickly check in on patients through their smartphones or mobile devices.
When connecting with the XProtect client remotely, a care provider can look at all the physiological monitors within his or her unit, keeping all their patients top of mind. The video system has had a very positive impact and has helped reshape how they are providing care.
“Something that has always resonated with me was feedback I received from several providers about how they are now able to monitor and check on their kids’ physiological monitors when they are at their desk or even at home,” Summanen said. “By always being present in their day-to-day life, they’re now thinking about the care of those chil- dren all the time. It’s really changing the model of care here at Nemours.”
Managing Behavioral Care
With the Orlando Behavioral Health unit, video is used primarily as a clinician tool to allow multiple people — often including the par- ents — to observe a patient session without causing the child addi- tional stress or distraction. Also common is for the clinician to have a set of tasks for the parents to work through with their child in the room, and video records the family as they address the tasks together.
The Nemours Applied Behavior Analysis team was looking for a way to help teach skills to patients with behavior deficits or issues of inappropriate behavior, such as tantrums or self-injurious actions, and to help the patient adapt to more appropriate conduct. The skill development and training is a valuable tool for staff, parents and other family members as well.
“The use of cameras and recorded video is a critical tool: problem behavior is often difficult for parents to see,” said Ansley Hodges, lead behavior analyst, Nemours Hospital. “The cameras make it easy because parents can sit with me in my office as we watch the therapist at work with the patient. I explain what the therapist is doing and why,
and the parents can start to see that. Then they think OK; this might look bad but the patient is responding and making improvement.”
Hodges added that the same concept applies for new skills when instructing patients on how to communicate more effectively. Here, cameras and recorded video are an efficient way to illustrate and rein- force desired behaviors. The capability has been a huge game changer for the hospital’s Autism clinic.
“We’ve received such great feedback from parents and our staff about how helpful the video is,” Hodges said. “Parents feel more con- fident in leaving their child in our care because they know that we’re monitoring everything very closely. Some patients are here for 30 hours a week, and at any point in time, we can review specific events or simply observe their progress.”
Summanen also said that upon parental approval, live session video is also used for staff and student observation and training pur- poses. Each room features an LED indicator, so the parents or clini- cian know when they are or are not being observed.
Flexible, Open Integrations
The Milestone XProtect open platform VMS currently supports more than 8,000 different security devices from more than 150 manufac- turers. Technology partners include manufacturers of network video cameras, encoders, DVRs and NVRs, storage equipment, access con- trol, alarm and detection systems, video analytics, GPS technology, laser scanners, emergency call boxes and much more.
With the Milestone VMS, systems integration is easy via Applica- tion Program Interfaces (APIs) to share data between systems, devic- es, and components for an efficient, unified solution.
“The open platform allows me the flexibility to source and inte- grate third-party products and capabilities, which enables us to great- ly expand and customize the tools and services that we provide to the organization and our patients,” Summanen said.
For example, Summanen found the UK-based company, Antrica, a manufacturer and supplier of H.264 and H.265 hardware, who offered a video encoder solution that the Nemours team was interested in working with. Summanen contacted their lead engineer and explained that he wanted to integrate their system with the Milestone VMS, and it was no problem.
“The engineer contacted Milestone, and within a few weeks, they were able to write a new codec into the Milestone driver pack — and now it’s part of the driver pack that’s released with every Milestone product,” said Summanen. “The entire process was just so simple. At the end of the day, when you have a great partner, it’s easy to be innovative and successful.”
Barbara Rizzatti is the director of communications, Americas, at Milestone.
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