21-23 Aug 2024
ICC, Sydney

Case Study: Robust Infrastructure in Healthcare

Jul 26, 2017

From operating theatres to recovery wards, Crestron works behind the scenes in hospitals, controlling AV, lighting, BMS and HVAC. Take a look into how AV technology is shaping the a healthier future for our hospitals and medical practices, in this case study with Crestron’s National Sales Manager, Brendan Doyle.

Brendan Doyle is National Sales Manager – Channel at Crestron ANZ. He says Crestron has developed scalable technology that ensures an important feature of AV transport in healthcare: zero latency. It’s chief product for this is the NVX infrastructure.

Introducing the DigitalMedia NVX Series

The DigitalMedia NVX Series is a 4K60 4:4:4 HDR over standard 1Gb network AV solution. Typical network AV systems encode/decode then scale sequentially, which results in additional latency. Crestron’s patent-pending technology simultaneously encodes/decodes and scales, eliminating any latency incurred in transmitting video over a network.

“We’re transporting AV signals around the hospital,” Doyle explains. “So in a digital operating theatre we have a Crestron touch panel controller to select Vivaldi for the surgeon to listen to while he’s operating. Say there’s an endoscopy camera being used in theatre – the feed from that camera can be taken and transported to other room monitors and recording systems.”

Educational advantages of AV transport in hospitals

Crestron’s clients include Bendigo Hospital and the Royal Adelaide Hospital, which Doyle says has made a large technology investment in recent years. Signals sourced in the hospital’s operating theatres can be sent for remote participant viewing, which is excellent for teaching purposes.

“Crestron is quite strong in the education centres within universities,” Doyle says. “AV technology helps learning hospitals improve the calibre of their teaching. They might choose an NVX system to take what’s happening in the theatre and send it to a viewing room so students can view what the surgeon’s up to without worrying about clean rooms.”

NVX 1 Gigabit infrastructure offers a realistic solution

NVX ensures real-time, full-motion 4K60 video performance for the presentation of multimedia, videoconferencing and live camera images.

“The NVX series is a JPEG 2000 based video control/transport system,” Doyle says. “At the moment we can get signals around hospitals via a dedicated CAT 6 cabling or something similar, which is based on our digital media platform, or HDBaseT.

“And as we progress into the next phase of technology, which is to put everything on to a network, NVX will start taking the place of those HDBaseT elements.”

The AV buzz these days is about ‘AV over IP’, and Doyle says NVX achieves that goal using realistic architecture.

“At the moment most networks, and healthcare ones in particular, won’t have the bandwidth to make advanced AV systems work,” he says.

“But NVX works on a one Gigabit infrastructure, which is important because that’s what most people have; whereas a lot of other AV over IP solutions are 10 Gig, which is unrealistic for the real world.”

Doyle says surgeons are especially keen adopters of advanced AV infrastructure. “Digital theatres are improvements on the surgeons’ productivity and they can share a lot more information with advanced AV. They all see the value.”

While Wi-Fi may be feasible in other environments, Doyle says hospitals require a more reliable AV transport/control path. In an operating theatre with high bandwidth signals, NVX can deliver zero latency, which means no delays in the video transport.

“We do have a product called AirMedia, a wireless HD presentation device. But you wouldn’t put that into a health application. In health we want to be super robust, and the last thing we want is for video to be half a frame off.”

Crestron at Integrate Expo 2017

Doyle will be present at the Crestron exhibit at Integrate Expo this year and says the company is bringing along some interesting products.

Apart from demonstrating NVX, Creston’s Mercury platform will be on display. Combining all the must-have conferencing features in one easy to use device, Mercury enables people to work together irrespective of location. It includes full-duplex audio and optional HD video.

“We’ll also be showing a product called Freeform, which hasn’t been released yet,” Doyle says. “It’s a corporate style product, a presentation device with a wireless presenter built into it. It also has a wired 4K input.

“So I walk into a room and I plug my laptop in and the content will be automatically thrown up to the room screen. It’ll potentially be linked to an occupancy sensor, which will turn the screen on. It’ll also have booking information on there – a lot of feature sets packed into a box.”

See Crestron on Stand H26 at Integrate this 29-31 August at the Melbourne Convention & Exhibition Centre. Register for free exhibition entry here.

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