9/29/2016

Automation Solution for Hospitals

 

Customer's segment

Hospitals

 

Problems that the company was facing?

The company was in search for greater efficiency, productivity, comfort and safety in medical facilities. As these environments must be clean, comfortable and safe for their patients’ equipment to assist and maintain these conditions must be implemented. Such programs generate costs, primarily related to the increase in energy consumption.
In order to rationalize the power consumption and improve the performance of hospitals it is necessary to supervise the equipment and record information of their functioning during operation to get the maximum performance from the service structure and ensure patient safety.

 

NOVUS solutions

NOVUS devices can be integrated into various types of systems in a hospital environment to meet various needs

Energy: to reduce the costs associated with power consumption, data recorded from the operation of generators and transformers through the monitoring of related variables in real time allows optimal management of the process that use electrical energy.

Boilers: fundamental for heating water for the entire building structure - especially hospital accommodation sector - the need to display and monitor pressure and temperature can be met. Moreover, the acquisition and recording of data by FieldLogger helps find faults and shortcomings of the processes and the tools necessary to analyze the changes that contribute to improving process efficiency.

Refrigerators and Freezers: used to store test materials, drugs, vaccines and food, this equipment can also benefit from the use of controllers and temperature indicators. Small changes in temperature can affect the material being preserved in these cooling systems. Data acquisition and real-time alarm notification are critical for these processes to control inventory and associated cost plus ensure safety.

Water tanks: water supply systems of the hospital can incorporate a system to record the volume of water and trigger alarms based on change. It is also possible to control the pumps with a PLC, ensuring balancing and longer service life of such equipment.

Laundry: all equipment used for cleaning clothes and fabrics can also be automated. As they require more care due to possible contamination, they need to be sterilized, washed and dried at quite accurate temperatures. Through programmable controls, the user can obtain information about the operation of the washers or dryers, defining the relevant parameters that influence the correct and efficient operation.

Kitchen: another area where automation can be integrated at all stages, from food storage to preparation of the meals and clean up. DataLoggers can ensure that the temperature during storage is adequate to preserve food. Indicators and temperature controllers can be used in ovens, in addition to timers to improve the management of these processes.

 

Benefits achieved

The same control and monitoring equipment can be applied to compressed air systems and to control the pressure of the gases used in various hospital services.
All areas can have a supervisory system (SCADA) connected to the various equipment & systems to optimize management by providing system status in real time via charts and reports that leads to more appropriate operational decisions.
Since hospitals use measuring instruments for temperature, pressure, electricity and moisture, the NOVUS Metrology Laboratory offers calibration services, which can be done in the same hospital to reduce downtime of any process.