Issue link: https://securitytechnologyexecutive.epubxp.com/i/282968
20 SECURITY TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVE • February/March 2014 www.SecurityInfoWatch.com COVER STORY: HEALTHCARE SECURITY the large-scale installations will work to the advantage of bigger security integrators and manufacturers with more manpower and complex project experience. Emergenc y Notification: Hospitals are chaotic by nature, and it is difficult to determine active threats and alert employees quickly and effectively. As a solution, the experts are recommending emergency noti- fication systems. Jim Stankevich, CHPA-L, global healthcare security manager at Tyco Security Products, believes "that every facility should have a duress/emergency notification system to protect staff, visitors and patients." There is special interest in campuswide sys- tems that can turn any device (computer, phone, tablet, pager and so forth) into an instant panic button and use those same devices to alert employees of incidents. These systems greatly reduce the time it takes to identify a threat along with the time it takes staff to react. This is true for both isolated and facilitywide incidents. Emergency notifi- cation allows the individual employee to alert the appropriate people the first time. A nurse could notify security of a violent patient in a specific wing, while a janitor could notify the whole facility of an active shooter. This flex- ibility allows each event to be handled accord- ingly and in a timely fashion. Emergency notification technology can also streamline hospital systems through unification and automation. These systems can be integrated into all existing alarms, cre- ating a single alarm lockdown or tiered levels of responses. They also reduce the impact of the "human element" since the system can automatically notify the right people of an event, such as a breach, fire or temperature drop. In these cases, there is no lag time from when an event takes place to when the alarm is triggered. "When possible, taking the human ele- ment out of radio and other forms of notifi- cation speeds up the response time, reduces the risk of wrong location data and enables dispatch to get on with the other issues they need to address during an emergency," said Tim Lee, vice president of sales at Lynx Duress and Emergency Notification Systems. The versatility of emergency notification has appeal beyond security because it can sig- nificantly increase employee efficiency. The system can be used to alert staff of an office closure, call specific nurses or doctors, help raise an alarm on a missing patient and turn the lights on in a dark area of a parking lot. Biometrics: Interest in biometrics is ris- ing, and many facilities will utilize these systems over the next year. The biomet- rics industry has been on the cusp of rapid growth and widespread adoption for quite some time. Less expensive and more eas- ily deployable technologies have made bio- metrics attractive to security professionals, especially fingerprinting, facial recognition, retina scans and hand measurements. They also add an additional tier of security and have certain advantages over traditional access control systems. Primarily, they are harder to circumvent since biometric sig- natures cannot be easily forged. They also eliminate the need to badge or remember passwords, preventing cards falling into the wrong hands when lost or stolen and the sharing or forgetting of passwords. Added "Hospitals are chaotic by nature, and it is difficult to determine active threats and alert employees quickly and effectively." STE_18-21_0314 Barbour CoverStory HlthCare.indd 20 3/14/14 11:11 AM