Page 52 - Security Today, July/August 2020

An Indispensable Role
Why single source technology integrations join during early phases of construction
of hospitals and clinics By Jeff Elliott
Today, there is significant in- crease in the number of hos- pitals, clinics and outpatient centers that are being built or remodeled across the country, in part due to the rise in demand for healthcare from an aging population and more access to health insurance. To accommodate this rapid growth, however, requires a sophisticated level of technol- ogy integration that goes beyond brick- and-mortar construction to the design and installation of networking, commu- nications, electronic record-keeping and patient/staff security systems.
As a result, the healthcare industry is increasingly turning to single source technology integrators during the earliest phases of construction that can design, install and manage an integrated package of systems while coordinating with other more traditional aspects of construction.
AN INTEGRAL WHOLE
Integration, defined on dictionary.com as “an act or instance of combining into an integral whole,” can be a somewhat vague concept because the combination of parts can be unending, while each individual so- lution is specific to the application.
What is known is that the best inte- grators are those that have an extensive knowledge of the available products and component parts of any system and are able to connect them together in a man- ner that extracts significant added value. In other words, the “whole” [a properly integrated system] should be much greater than the sum of its parts.
In healthcare, with new construction booming, integration has taken on new meanings as well. To start, technology in- tegration in new hospital, medical group or clinic construction now encompasses an ar- ray of options from network IT and Wi-Fi
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JULY/AUGUST 2020 | SECURITY TODAY
HEALTHCARE SECURITY