Subscriber Discussion

Looking For Information On IR And Illumination For Patients And Rooms

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Carl Bracken
Aug 31, 2015

Hello Guys, Is there any guidence / info on best practices with respect to proposing / deploying camera products with typical IR illumination inside hospital patient rooms? I am curious more about potential hazards if the IR source is in typical default mode i.e. running when the ligts are off. Just wondering since we are seeing more and more requests to update existing and or add new room monitoring systems with out any recording of course. I have yet to see a camera spec sheet that indicates whcih IR wavelength is used in cameras with IR sources I suspect that lower cost products tend to be the 840nm range whcih is can be seen by many folks.

Thanks

GC
Greg Cortina
Aug 31, 2015

Carl, typically 840/850nm. If you go to 950nm your range will be shorter but I doubt that's a problem in a small room and will be invisible to the normal human eye. Are there any privacy concerns?

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Carl Bracken
Aug 31, 2015

Thanks Greg for the feedback. We are starting to see request for the cameras to be shut off if a patient has not signed some sort of waiver, at the smaller facilities we approach this with zero ability for recording, so the concern becomes one of who can see the monitor, we work close with our clients to find the best location and installation for a monitor that supports the nurse staff needs and keeps teh view stricltly limited to folks behind the glass.

We have struggled with different methods to turning a camera off with out de-powering it. We have seen many issue arrise when a typical IP camera is cycled through power besides the time it takes to fully boot and become 100% functional we have found the display side of things also does not just come back like analog did...

U
Undisclosed #1
Aug 31, 2015
IPVMU Certified

If you go to 950nm your range will be shorter but I doubt that's a problem in a small room and will be invisible to the normal human eye.

If one uses 'invisible' 950mm are there any minimum height mounting guidelines, etc?

Asking because the OP mentioned hazards, and I've heard that one can hurt ones eyes before one even realizes it by staring into an apparently invisible IR source. But maybe that's overblown, have you heard that?

MM
Michael Miller
Aug 31, 2015

Carl we are also seeing a lot of requests for patient monitoring solutions. Are you using purpose built solution or are you using standard VMS solutions?

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Carl Bracken
Aug 31, 2015

Mike we have delivered patient monitoring using 2 methods. At a large teaching institute we already had a substantial system based on American Dymanics architecture so the design in that facility was to deploy '0' TB servers that AD has in their price schedule and drive the monitors with clients running on small local PC's, that way all of the various IT security issues and requirements for validation have already been dealt with (the teaching hospital is a tight IT environment) The drawback is expense and complexity.

The other solution we have deployed multiples of in different care facilities looking for visibility in patient areas, we are basically installing a dedicated POE LAN environment and using the Next Level Security decoder module, sometimes depending on camera count the module is configured for a specific deisplay or sequence and that is it. In another site with around 20 rooms we have the decoder paging through groups of cameras, with a small USB numeric keypad attached. We developed a cheat sheet for the nurse staff to quickly call up any single room and then toggle back to the paging sequence.

MM
Michael Miller
Aug 31, 2015

Carl do you have any experence with Cisco's Virtual Patient Observation solution? One of you health care customers went with this solution becuase it intergrates into their patient records solution. They use card readers to enable and disable the cameras in the rooms.

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Carl Bracken
Aug 31, 2015

Mike we have not looked at or been presented anything from Cisco. The concept looks interesting using card readers to change status of a camera on/off and logging who and when that occured could prove useful, it woudl depend on how it coudl integrate to existing card access systems.

MM
Michael Miller
Aug 31, 2015

Here is another option if your intrested: http://www.care-view.com/home

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