Since its opening in 2014, Fiona Stanley has sought to use sophisticated technology to advance patient care through its various medical services. From the outset, working with building automation partner Honeywell, Fiona Stanley looked to outfit its facilities with smart technology to improve the overall comfort, sustainability, and efficiency of its facilities for patients, visitors, and staff while ensuring a high quality of care.

Specifically, the hospital sought to use smart building technology to ensure business continuity, visibility, and control of its around-the-clock operations. And with more than 2,000 visitors and more than 3,000 staff passing through its doors on a daily basis, the hospital also looked to implement an enhanced security and incident management system.

From a facility management perspective, the hospital needed a building management system that would provide the insight and control of the various systems spread across campus, and required to operate the complex facility. The system also needed to be flexible and scalable to accommodate future renovations and additions. Finally, the hospital also needed to incorporate technology that accommodated the Western Australian Government’s focus on energy efficiency and sustainability.

Fiona Stanley adopted an integrated approach to its buildings infrastructure, implementing Honeywell Buildings Integrator (EBI) as its central integration platform. The building management system provided a pathway for the hospital to leverage the connectivity of other systems, as well as forming a true, integrated backbone for the smart hospital.

With EBI at the core, the hospital wove in other connected systems to maximize safety, security, and productivity for its patients and staff — along with energy efficiency. There are several important integrated components.

Information communications technology (ICT) and enterprise extra low-voltage integration (ELV) systems provide the infrastructure for servers, storage, a virtual environment, and an active IP network on one common platform, as well as mobile connectivity. As a result, the hospital eliminated duplicate IT hardware and software within its buildings and established a single common user interface for graphics, reporting, and alarm management, reducing the overall complexity of its communications systems.

Also, an integrated security management system includes access control and intrusion detection technologies, CCTV cameras, an intercom system, and Honeywell Digital Video Manager R500, a digital video management platform to facilitate efficient monitoring. Integrated components also include a chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear lockdown system, as well as smart card technologies and an automated incident management system that enables any user to easily initiate and safely mange incidents as they occur from anywhere on campus.

Energy management technologies, including Honeywell Energy Manager, enables facility managers to monitor and control more than 1,100 meters monitoring gas, water, and electricity usage across the hospital campus. This provides more granular visibility and control of campus-wide energy usage. The hospital also relies on campus-wide HVAC control and monitoring technologies to promote more optimized and efficient system usage, further reducing energy consumption and operational costs.

According to Honeywell, the key to implementing smart building technology is not only providing the connectivity for systems to talk to each other. It’s also about establishing the means for organizations to listen to what their buildings are telling them. For Fiona Stanley Hospital, flexible, scalable, and integrated building technologies have established a roadmap for driving down costs — including operational, energy, maintenance, and equipment lifecycle costs — and improving campus system-wide insight and control.

For hospital officials, the outcome is a hospital environment in tune with the ultimate objective of providing the best patient care possible.ES