When it comes to overcoming customers’ security and business challenges, technology is often front and center in designing a solution. This is understandable, as today’s products and systems offer a level of intelligence never before seen, and technology is continually changing and improving.
In this highly competitive environment, however, product features and benefits are not enough. As important as the technology may be, customers are also looking for intangibles like trust, which is fundamental to every relationship, including business. Customers want a high level of confidence in their security provider and the solutions they deploy.
Therefore, integrators must constantly strive to bring a human element to every system they design and install by deploying solutions that not only solve customers’ security challenges but also offer the potential to improve other aspects of their lives beyond security.
By deploying intelligent technology in a creative way that brings new dimensions of insight to these solutions, integrators can also open up the door to new business opportunities. However, this means thinking outside the box and challenging conventions when it comes to security solutions. It also requires understanding how the latest network technology can be deployed in different ways for different situations and in different industries.
Below are real-world examples of law enforcement and healthcare applications that answer these - and many more - questions and demonstrate how Axis solutions can bring new dimensions to traditional security applications, helping integrators earn new business while keeping customers satisfied by delivering greater value.
Vital Insights that go Beyond Clinical Data
In healthcare settings, patient health is of the utmost importance. Often this variable is assessed based on clinical data alone, but this only tells part of the story. In many cases, minute changes in a patient’s color or behavior can be a sign of escalating problems. Unfortunately, current medical technology isn’t always capable of detecting these small changes in real time. To do so requires a human touch, but because staff cannot be in every patient’s room simultaneously, they can be missed.
Recognizing this challenge, Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Florida, deployed Axis cameras in all of its 100-plus patient rooms and established a Tactical Logistics Center (TLC) where a rotating team of paramedics continually checks patient vital signs through a central monitoring center. Live streaming video from the Axis cameras is also integrated into the TLC, allowing paramedics to also visually see if a child is in distress and if so, call for immediate medical attention.
By adding this human touch to clinical data, Nemours has saved lives and prevented potentially severe complications. For example, paramedics have observed patients at the moment they’ve gone into a seizure and immediately alerted medical staff to respond in time to avert brain damage. In another instance, cameras captured a mother attempting to smother her child, allowing paramedics to alert the hospital’s rapid response team to intervene.
Enhancing Observations and Delivering Peace of Mind
Using state-of-the-art sports and fitness equipment and leading-edge neuro and health sciences research, therapists and mentor buddies at Inclusive Sports and Fitness (ISF) work with young athletes on the autism spectrum or who live with other developmental challenges to increase their social interaction, cognitive behavioral skills and motor function.
When ISF moved into a larger facility in Holbrook, NY, the organization planned to install Axis cameras and AXIS Companion software to secure the building. After talking with the Contemporary Computer Services, Inc., an Axis partner, ISF learned that cameras could provide much more than security. In order to use the surveillance system to visually document their athletes’ progress over time, ISF had cameras installed in therapy rooms, with a large-screen monitor placed in the facility’s lounge area.
Now, in addition to providing a safe and secure environment for its athletes, Axis cameras augment therapists’ and mentor buddies’ observations by often capturing subtle behaviors that may indicate growth but might otherwise have gone unnoticed. In addition to using the system for critical assessment, by streaming live video to the lounge area, ISF provides parents and caregivers with opportunities to observe their children achieving milestones in their social, emotional and physical development without intruding on the therapy session, where their presence could potentially impede progress.
Creating a Safer, More Inviting City
By its very nature, police work is a people-intensive effort. Officers benefit from a number of tools and technologies to augment their performance by providing them with valuable real-time intelligence, but to truly do their job effectively, officers must interact with members of the public regularly.
The Hartford Police Department learned the importance of balancing human factors and technology the hard way due to its fragmented, under-utilized investigative technologies that were unable to communicate with each other. This meant crucial details sometimes failed to reach beat officers and detectives until it was too late to act. To solve these problems, the department created a Capital City Command Center (C4) where vast amounts of data and video from a network of Axis cameras is integrated and synthesized and pushed out to officers in the field as needed.
Designed on an open standards platform, the command center allows Hartford police to integrate third-party crime-fighting applications like BriefCam video content analytics. Bringing a human element to the center, civilian crime analysts monitor streaming video displayed on a video wall, compiling, cataloging and pushing information and video out to the field from a bank of computers. As a result of the deployment, officers have been able to quickly find children at busy street fairs, and to track and apprehend pickpockets. These results are encouraging, but the system also offers even more potential as a means of improving overall quality of life and business growth.
For example, the analytics could be used to recognize areas of the city that might benefit from changes and improvements, such as installing bicycle lanes on certain streets or determining whether a crossing guard or footbridge could be beneficial near a school or particular intersection. Additionally, the number of commercial businesses linking their cameras to the C4 has also created opportunities. The police department is exploring the possibility of sharing its intelligence model with businesses to help them increase their revenues. For instance, knowing how much foot traffic passes by an establishment throughout the day could help the business owners make decisions about operating hours, staffing and more.
This blend of people and solutions allows Hartford police to go beyond protecting and serving to help make Hartford an inviting place for residents, businesses, visitors and investment.
Building Relationships for Improved Public Safety
Another city that has used technology to improve the effectiveness of law enforcement is Atlanta, where the Atlanta Police Foundation established Operation Shield, a video integration initiative that pulls video resources from public and private entities into a single command center. This provides police with a real-time view of situations across the city, providing actionable intelligence that allows them to better combat criminal activity and improve emergency preparedness.
Through the initiative, more than 400 cameras, 90 percent of which are AXIS Q60 PTZ models, have been installed in Atlanta’s downtown area. Adding in other city organizations and departments’ cameras brings another 4,000 to the surveillance network. However, the largest boost has been realized through partnerships with local businesses, multi-family housing properties and other private entities.
As a result of these collaborative relationships, the Atlanta Police Department has 24/7 access to surveillance throughout the city without incurring the cost of owning and maintaining thousands of cameras. For their part, the private businesses, shopping malls, housing complexes and others who share their live video benefit from faster, better prepared response from law enforcement and emergency personnel.
Conclusion
Innovative technology is and will continue to be vital for meeting customers’ security and operational needs but given the ultra-competitive nature of the landscape today, technology alone may not be enough. The true key to unlocking the door to enhanced security and business optimization, new beginnings and even business growth is thinking creatively about how and for what purpose security solutions are deployed.
The above examples represent just a small sample of the many ways integrators are thinking outside the box to deploy Axis products and solutions to deliver the trust and other intangibles customers are seeking, which can be just as important as the solutions themselves. Pairing leading-edge technology with a human touch can help their customers achieve objectives they may never have envisioned but which will deliver greater value by improving their overall quality of life, while also allowing integrators to generate necessary revenue to grow their own businesses.