Brussels hospitals centralise alerts
HIS-IZZ Hospitals is a network of four hospitals based in Brussels. The hospitals are pioneers in the use of technology to support the provision of state-of-the-art patient care
HIS-IZZ Hospitals network has implemented a centralised notification workflow hub using message master Enterprise Alert from Derdack. This has automated the management of critical alerts and warnings, resulting in improved business continuity and a lower risk of unexpected business interruption.
Business challenges
HIS-IZZ Hospitals' four hospitals use a number of internal monitoring systems. Previously if an alarm was detected alerts were sent from the monitoring software to pager devices carried by a team of technical staff. However a 16 character message limit meant that a complex series of codes was used to indicate the nature and source of the alert. Staff had to consult a hospital floor map to determine exactly where to go which was time consuming and increased the risk of service disruption.
HIS-IZZ Hospitals upgraded its analogue phone system to one that used Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) but this could not integrate with the pager devices. It therefore needed a better way of managing alerts as Mr. Brocken, Prevention Advisor, HIS-IZZ Hospitals explains, "We wanted a modern and future proof solution to automating the notification workflow for our critical alerts and warnings. We intensively searched for a suitable system and could see that message master Enterprise Alert offered a proven solution that provided all of the functionality we were looking for. It has given us greater control over notifications and reduced the risk of interruption to our business continuity."
Implementing a centralised notification hub
Each hospital uses different monitoring systems. message master® Enterprise Alert now interfaces with the Bemac Diana II, Bemac MP80, Siemens Algorex and VLV fire systems. If a critical event is detected, for example a fire alarm is triggered, an email is immediately sent to the message master Enterprise Alert server.
Derdack's software intelligently analyses the content of the email to determine the precise location of the alarm and nature of the problem. It then creates and sends an SMS message to the technical team that supports the particular building affected by the alert. As the hospital operates 24x7 a full calendar of staff availability is maintained in message master Enterprise Alert ensuring that no matter what time or day, alerts are sent to the correct team members.
Full back up and resilience
Derdack's integration partner M2MCOM has implemented a pair of message master Enterprise Alert servers each of which acts as a centralised notification hub for two hospitals. Each server also provides reciprocal backup, and in the event of a problem affecting normal operation all alerts can be seamlessly switched to the other server thus ensuring continual monitoring.
Message master Enterprise Alert also manages the notification workflow for non-urgent warnings such as where a fire door has been left open or a smoke detector is no longer responding. Alerts are sent from message master Enterprise Alert via SMS to the relevant technical team responsible for that hospital.
Benefits
In a busy hospital a fire alarm has to be investigated immediately to minimise any risk to vulnerable patients. There can be no service downtime and this was an important consideration in building the notification hub. Any updates to the message master® Enterprise Alert software only need to be made to one server. Changes are automatically rolled out to the other server, minimising system maintenance time.
Mr.Brocken commented, "Intelligent translation of the codes contained within the email alerts by message master® Enterprise Alert ensures that we are now sending detailed and meaningful information using plain language to the technical team. This improves the speed of response allowing staff to react before patient care can be impacted. We have eliminated the need for staff to carry both pagers and mobile phones. Together with the low maintenance associated with message master Enterprise Alert, we have also reduced our ongoing monitoring costs."
Expanding the project scope
The sophisticated implementation impressed Bemac who now offer message master® Enterprise Alert as an optional add-on to its own fire systems. Mr. Brocken, HIS-IZZ Hospitals concluded, "message master Enterprise Alert has given us a flexible system for managing notifications for critical alerts and warnings which enhances our ability to provide high levels of patient care at all times. The project has been a complete success and we are now investigating connecting other technical systems to the notification hub. We are also looking at using message master Enterprise Alert to more effectively manage patient to nurse calls via SMS."
Matthes Derdack, Managing Director of Derdack added, "Several factors contribute to business continuity and operational benefits from the investment in notification workflow software carried out by HIS-IZZ Hospitals. The strength of message master Enterprise Alert's integration capabilities ensures that additional systems can be connected to the hub with minimal effort. Centralisation and consolidation leads to significantly reduced total cost of ownership and ultimately, message master Enterprise Alert is an important element not only for business continuity but for the health and security of the hospital's patients."
