Nestled at the foot of the Outeniqua mountains the town of George is the heart of the world-renowned Garden Route. Likewise, the George Hospital serves as a regional hospital for the southern Cape and Karoo regions as well as a district hospital for the town of George itself.
In 1918 the community of George started thinking about building a hospital. This idea was triggered by a flu epidemic that had swept over the country. Twelve years later the hospital opened with 10 beds and three staff members. Today, the 266-bed George Regional Hospital provides specialist healthcare to the population of the southern Cape and Karoo regions, totalling 550 000 inhabitants
Even though UTCFS’s fire detection system was installed at the hospital, no other security systems were present. Thus, there was a constant risk of theft from the hospital and of patients and visitors entering restricted areas.
The George Regional Hospital wanted to install an access control system without hampering the flow of patients and staff. A large number of staff members also needed access to specific areas in the hospital at certain times.
UTCFS recommended its Alliance management software, an integrated security platform that incorporates its existing fire detection system. This enables integration of fire detection, access control, intrusion and video into one easy-to-use graphical package.
Using access rights, the hospital grants staff and patients movement as appropriate. The flexibility of the system also makes it easy to effectively change staff’s access rights, for example, if they switched from a day shift to a night shift or vice versa.
By integrating the 95 camera video system into the Alliance platform, security staff tracks visual incidences via the access log, producing detailed stored information of the user with just a single click.
The existing fire network was also integrated into the Alliance graphical user interface enabling integration with other security systems like Alliance. Consequently, when a fire would occur, the relevant emergency doors would automatically open. All in all, the hospital integrates all the tiers of security to produce an efficient, autonomous, user-friendly security management platform.
For more information contact UTC Fire & Security, +27 (0)11 579 7300, [email protected], www.utcfireandsecurity.com
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