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It was estimated that extending the existing CCTV system to include new buildings within the hospital’s campus would have cost some £45,000* more than networking the new surveillance equipment through the existing 1GB Ethernet cabling and established 11 MB wireless links to outlying buildings.
Stafford Hospital installed a 1 GB backbone with two Cisco 6500 core switches linked by a 2 GB connection. Twenty Cisco edge switches support Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs) for 2,500 regular hospital staff. This equipment was installed two years ago as the hospital prepared itself for central NHS IT initiatives such as Integrated Care Records Service (ICRS) and the establishment of Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) These systems are designed to digitise patient records for easier and more cost efficient storage and network distribution of patient records.
Stafford Hospital's security is managed within its 30-strong “Security Services Department” which uses DV Networks' “Discover e” system to view and store images taken from the 21 cameras now deployed in the main hospital building and the Technology Park a kilometre away. 19 additional cameras will be deployed as the surveillance system is extended across the hospital car parks.
Dominic Bruning, managing director, Axis Communications (UK) Limited, explained: "Stafford is a great example of IP being selected over CCTV to utilise existing network infrastructure. The savings at the installation stage are significant and are escalating as the project is extended. IP surveillance also offers Stafford the ability to better manage recording, storage and movement of MJPEG images from the system to the police when incidents occur."
* Estimated cost of internal and external cabling for the planned CCTV upgrade was £75,302 as against actual installation costs before security equipment of £33,000 producing a saving of £42,302. The saving of 56 per cent is calculated by taking £42,302 divided by £75,302. Plexnet is the source for these figures.
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Diagram of the Network Infrastructure at Stafford , 198kB gif file.
