Page 72 - Security Today, November/December 2022

Hospital Security "The success of a joint solution like this comes down to the balance of enhancing patient care while creating more efficiency. It allows key staff, especially nurses, to use their time for higher-value activities without getting bogged down with time-intensive, tedious tasks." By Chris Lennon Video Surveillance in Healthcare Enhances Patient Care Healthcare organizations are unique environments. They regularly con- tend with ongoing business challeng- es such as limited resources and ris- ing costs. Adding to their challenges are 24/7 visitor traffic, confidential patient data, large supplies of pharmaceuticals, and emergency situations. As a result, healthcare facilities are embracing any technology to help them be more efficient, including video surveillance pixinoo/Shutterstock.com technology. Cameras are now regularly installed throughout every type of healthcare facility to meet a diverse set of security and surveillance needs. Multi-sensor technology is beneficial to hospitals looking to get the most out of their security budgets. With one device, data drop, or license, they can record several key areas like pharmacies, hallways, or lobbies with unique fields of view for each. Cameras in the operating room help to “audit” surgeries to make sure certain proce- dures are followed and provide evidence in case of issues like “wrong sight surgeries," where surgery is performed on the wrong part of a body. Increasing Use of AI The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is spreading across the healthcare industry for a range of applications. Hospitals are com- plementing their cameras’ security monitor- ing performance with enhanced data-gather- ing capabilities that combine intelligent audio/video analytics and AI. The result is targeted object detection and classification, which saves time for hospital security teams by speeding up forensic searches. When an incident occurs, locating a person of interest, for example, can take only a few minutes instead of having to sift through hundreds of camera streams. AI is also playing a larger role in cameras used for license plate recognition, recording vehicle entries and exits and alerting staff to potentially dangerous activities in real time. For example, all hospitals have to deal with issues like “dump and run” incidents. A car may drive by an emergency room entrance in the early morning hours, “dump” off a body that’s the victim of a criminal activity, and then speed away. The hospital needs to know who was driv- ing that car. With AI-based license plate rec- ognition, they can simply plug in their search attributes—a male in a red shirt and blue pants, between 2:00 and 2:30 a.m.—and get quick hits on people or objects that match those parameters. It’s more efficient than 28 campuslifesecurity.com | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022