The district general hospital is a 528-bed facility with general surgery, convalescence and a maternity unit, and with the wide variety of activity associated with a hospital, the demands required of the new system are challenging.
“Few organisations make more complex demands on their secuirty equipment than hospitals”, said vice president of Hikvision, Polo Cai.
Among the minimum requirements for the system are recording interaction between patients and reception staff, monitoring flow of people and use of ambulance bays, and protecting high-value items such as controlled drugs.
Foyer and reception areas, where many of the Hikvision network speed domes are located, have extremes of shadow and highlight, while the 4CIF IP box cameras are used in external areas on walkways, and in car parks 24 hours a day, meaning varying levels of light.
The hospital therefore required cameras offering a solution to the problems of fluctuating light conditions:
– true day-night functionality which could accommodate IR focus switch;
– trigger alarms on motion detection in areas prone to loiterers;
– control of saturation, brightness and contrast through client software.
Network video recorder
The camera footage is recorded on ARGOS’ ‘MUX’ dual-redundant network video recorder, a system which works with IP and megapexel cameras as well as encoded streams from analogue devices. This allows precise PTZ control over IP, and offers high-capacity storage on disk or removable media, suich as USB sticks.
At one end of the light spectrum, the cameras’ 128x wide dynamic range allows hospital management to filter our the noise created by bright sunlight and interior low light, while at the other security staff have an IR cut filter, ensuring correct focal shift as dark external areas move from day to night.
