As building technology evolves, security threats to buildings – including hospitals – are changing, as are the knowledge and skills needed from facility managers and employees to protect their buildings.

Facility managers must understand how the latest building security technology systems work together and stay proactive in utilizing the tools at hand to effectively address safety threats in order to maintain video surveillance systems, visitor entry control systems and other physical security infrastructure.

An additional benefit of technology, like the Internet of Things (IoT), is that safety and profitability no longer need to be mutually exclusive.

Traditionally, since the primary objective for a business is to drive profitability, protecting the safety of the people, assets and environment have often been viewed as somewhat necessary evils. Today’s IoT-enabled systems help to better identify, plan and manage operating and business risks, reducing the likelihood of unexpected production outages and downtime, and empowering facilities and plants to control the profitability of their safety applications.

Tyler Haak, business development manager at Schneider Electric, spoke with HC+O News to discuss IoT and how it will assist facility managers in the healthcare industry.

Q: How are technologies such as IoT evolving and making the facility manager’s job easier?

Haak: Sensing is being embedded into more and more devices, creating new points of access and data collection in our building systems. Concurrently, historically disparate systems are integrating in new ways with throughputs in data transmission that are much higher than previous generations of buildings. Facility managers in hospitals, outpatient clinics, assisted living centers, doctors’ offices and other healthcare facilities are able to use the insights generated from all this data to perform more specific, more proactive, and more effective tasks. With facility managers now able to leverage the IoT to focus their efforts in a healthcare setting, we are afforded better opportunities to accommodate changing patient needs and combat rising healthcare costs.

Q: What specific technologies should hospital facilities managers have on their radars?

Haak: There is a wide range of IoT-enabled technologies for healthcare facilities available today, and these are constantly evolving. One area that is having a significant impact on patient comfort is mobile patient room control applications. For example, IoT connectivity enables patients to use apps on their smart phones to create their own optimal healing environment through individual control over room temperature, lighting, windows and other more hospital-experience specific tasks like nurse calls and bed adjustments rather than relying on nurses to perform basic tasks. While enabling better comfort for patients, this also gives nurses more time to spend on clinical tasks.

Q: What are some of the key security threats to hospitals and how do these technologies help mitigate those risks?

Haak: Healthcare facilities experience both physical and cybersecurity threats, including both data theft and physical theft of hospital equipment. IoT-enabled devices can protect against equipment theft through incorporating real-time location system (RTLS) technology that provides alerts when assets or patients leave a designated area. To protect against data theft and other cyberattacks, healthcare facilities must ensure that all IoT enabled equipment uses the latest security best practices including end-to-end encryption.

Q: How can they be more pro-active in addressing safety threats to their facility?

Haak: Healthcare facility IT teams should implement IoT-based cybersecurity solutions to prevent attacks on technology that holds sensitive patient data. If the IT teams are qualified to implement efficient cybersecurity measures then they should go to a company like Scarlett Cybersecurity. As part of this, it is vital to incorporate the use of authentication and encryption to protect communications between mobile devices, controllers and workstations. In addition, system manufacturers need to provide training to the application developers to ensure that clients are complying with regulations such as HIPAA. Facility managers must incorporate threat modeling, secure code practices, extensive testing and more to ensure that their teams are following security regulations.

In addition, equipment manufacturers must provide security personnel with full documentation and instructions to ensure that they are deploying and maintaining their equipment efficiently, securely and effectively. Many facility managers are also dedicating specific staff to cybersecurity teams to help provide installation services, maintenance and ongoing support with incidents or vulnerabilities in the face of a constantly evolving threat.

Q: While budgetary restrictions have long been an issue in regard to technology and security, how are the latest ones becoming less of a financial concern?

Haak: Due to the efficiencies enabled by the latest IoT-enabled technologies, building management system (BMS) systems in many of today’s facilities are now able to significantly reduce energy costs, reduce maintenance costs and regulatory risk through predictive monitoring of equipment, streamline schedules and tasks, and create a host of other benefits from a wide range of efficiency gains. By using both cloud and on-premise technologies, BMS solutions allow facility managers to connect historically disparate systems such as lighting, HVAC, security and access control, as well as connected devices such as valves, actuators, sensors and meters into one integrated platform.

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PHILADELPHIA – Schneider Electric has announced their involvement with the PennFIRST team to design and build a new state-of-the-art pavilion featuring smart building technology for the University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine).

Penn Medicine’s new Pavilion aims to serve the evolving needs of patient comfort and satisfaction, and ensure clinicians can deliver the latest treatments and patient care techniques, while Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure for Healthcare will help Penn Medicine to reduce costs, optimize energy use, increase staff efficiency and much more for new levels of hospital efficiency.

The Pavilion will offer 500 private patient rooms and 47 operating rooms in a 1.5-million-square-foot, 17-story facility across from the Hospital of University of Pennsylvania and adjacent to the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine.

The key features of the Pavilion include an adaptable room concept through which patient rooms are equipped to maintain flexibility between an intensive care unit set-up and a standard room as patients recover, or as the patient population and caregiving needs change in the coming years.

Each spacious room will include a private bath and a comfortable area for family members and caregivers to stay nearby.

The new design also boasts a seamless flow of operations – from the emergency department through hybrid operating rooms used for both surgeries and high-tech interventional procedures through recovery and discharge – enhanced by technology and the latest research on how to facilitate and improve care team collaboration.

Telemedicine functionality will allow remote monitoring and consultations, as well as technology to link patients to their friends and families at all times.

The eco-friendly construction, design and operations plan works to strengthen Penn’s commitment to the environment, through pursuit of LEED certification, and innovations like the re-use of water, 100 percent outside air, and park-like, outdoor green space for patients, families and staff.

Warren Rosebraugh, Schneider Electric healthcare solution architect, stated that EcoStruxure for Healthcare will include multiple aspects enabling improvements to patient care.

For instance, Schneider Electric’s Clinical Environment Optimization solution helps save energy by automatically adjusting room conditions based on occupancy information and allows patients to ensure that they are comfortable by setting their room temperature through the patient room control mobile app, as well as adjusting the light, ventilation and blinds in their room.

This level of comfort can impact the patients’ state of mind and ability to sleep comfortably, therefore supporting their recovery.

Another example is when an operating room is to be used for an operation, the room settings will automatically go into occupied mode and the electrical and medical gas systems are checked, ventilations are checked, and environmental conditions are verified to make sure the room is safe.

Rosebraugh also highlighted the Lean IPD approach used to deliver the new Pavilion.

“The biggest challenge, as well as the most rewarding aspect of the project, was working with a large number of stakeholders to construct the pavilion using a Lean Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) approach,” said Rosebraugh. “This is one of the largest projects on the East Coast to design and build through this approach. In a traditional design and construction approach, each firm works on their respective project role and scope separately and linearly. In contrast, in IPD, the team works side by side from the beginning of the design process. With incentive through a shared profit model, the resulting collaboration saves time and money through innovation and solves challenges in real time.”

Construction of the Pavilion began in September 2016 and will advance through early 2021, with occupancy projected later in 2021.

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ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) has partnered with Schneider Electric, an international company headquartered in France, to deploy “Asset Performance Services” (APS) on its medical school in Rochester. APS is intended to help the facilities management team to manage the performance of and offer insights to the status of the facility’s electrical distribution equipment. The positive results and success from APS are the first step in what is now a long-term goal for URMC to apply this monitoring system to more of its campus facilities.

URMC sees 140,000 inpatients each year, and one million outpatients annually. The facilities management team is responsible for managing 5 million square feet of footprint across the medical center’s campus, and has over 26,000 pieces of medical equipment to keep up with. Additionally, the facility has shifted to an entirely electronic data filing system and electronic medical records system over the years. All of these factors combined add up to a high power demand for the facility.

All of this and more led URMC seek the development of a completely digital and intelligent campus. “Even though emergency power generators are in place, the core electrical systems have to be reliable,” said Mark Schwartz, director of facility operations at URMC. “When power goes out at this institution, even though we have emergency backup, it still makes people very nervous. It impacts surgeries and other cases that we may have going on,” said Schwartz. The first step to mitigating this issue for the medical center was the implementation of this monitoring system through Schneider Electric in April 2015.

The architecture-based campus-wide monitoring solution applied by Schneider to URMC is called an “EcoStruxure Asset Advisor.” This solution works by connecting and monitoring the medical center’s electrical distribution assets via the Cloud. Event notifications keep facility staff up to date regarding electrical distribution system performance. When abnormalities in the system occur, recommendations are made to the staff with the proper steps to take in order to avoid and prevent system failures. This innovative digital approach overall monitors the heartbeat of the institution, cuts down on maintenance costs, improves power system reliability and relieves overburdened staff.

Since deployment of the EcoStruxture in 2015, this solution has produced a 20 to one return on investment for the medical center, according to Schwartz. Schneider’s EcoStruxture enables the facilities team to be able to anticipate potential problems and better manage the monitoring of the high volume of equipment, which was previously impossible to keep up with. “In two incidences alone, we saved hundreds of thousands of dollars through early discovery of the problems,” said Schwartz.

With the current success of the initial pilot program of the APS system on URMC as a baseline foundation, plans are currently underway to establish a facility-wide energy management and power quality system, starting with the Golisano Children’s Hospital. Pending budget approval by University of Rochester management, the EcoStruxure Asset Advisor monitoring system is slated for installation at the Golisano Children’s Hospital before the end of 2017.

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