Situated in Bridgeport, Conn., St. Vincent’s Medical Center is a 473-bed community teaching and referral facility with a Level II trauma center, as well as a 76-bed inpatient psychiatric facility located 25 miles away in Westport. This comprehensive medical center provides a full range of inpatient and outpatient services with regional centers of excellence in cardiology, surgery, cancer care, orthopedics, diagnostics, women’s and family services, behavioral health, senior health, and an array of specialized services. St. Vincent’s Medical Center is a subsidiary of St. Vincent’s Health Services, which includes St. Vincent’s Behavioral Health Services, Westport Campus, St. Vincent’s College, St. Vincent’s Special Needs Services and St. Vincent’s Medical Center Foundation.

To uphold its reputation as a leading and safe medical facility, St. Vincent’s understands the important function that security plays in its community. Taking a leadership role in the development of strategies to mitigate security risks, campus management plans and coordinates innovative security measures. During the past several years, the St. Vincent’s security platform has evolved to a feature-rich system able to accommodate business challenges.

In 2009, St. Vincent’s began construction of a new parking garage. With this new infrastructure, there was a need for upgraded surveillance equipment that would connect wireless devices to cameras allowing transmission of video back to the central hub. To accomplish this task, the team evaluated three video management software (VMS) platforms. In the end, St. Vincent’s selected Verint’s Nextiva video management software to help monitor the new parking facility as well as the disparate site locations throughout the campus from the central monitoring hub.

The VMS platform provides St. Vincent’s with the ability to streamline video management functions and make sense of vast amounts of data collected by cameras and other business systems. The powerful, fully integrated VMS captures high-quality video images from analog and IP cameras, quickly recalls live and recorded video for investigations, and provides a scalable, open platform for future system expansion.

Viewing live and recorded video is extremely important for security departments that rely on technology, rather than security staff, to monitor extensive campus grounds. However, the VMS is just a fraction of the overall system. Recently, St. Vincent’s upgraded its VMS in conjunction with the installation of Nextiva S5000 Series IP megapixel cameras to help manage risks associated with the facility. With more than 150 cameras on campus, these IP cameras deliver high-definition video up to 2 megapixels in resolution. The multistreaming technology allows St. Vincent’s to customize compression formats to meet specific surveillance requirements while combining high video quality with efficient bandwidth management.

St. Vincent’s has already seen significant benefits from the VMS upgrade and deployment of IP cameras. Working in conjunction with the City of Bridgeport, the campus was able to track a convicted felon. Leveraging the megapixel technology, St. Vincent’s quickly identified the perpetrator, worked closely with the City of Bridgeport Police Department, and helped to dispatch a law enforcement team via mobile response. In another instance, a suspicious item was left behind and, with the aid of high-resolution cameras and an alert security team, the item was immediately seized by authorities and inspected for threat.

Based on the success of the current Verint solution, St. Vincent’s extended its investment in the VMS platform to help monitor activities throughout the campus, in its new Elizabeth Pfriem SWIM Center for Cancer Care, and on surrounding city streets.

While St. Vincent’s has initiated and completed several major security project upgrades in recent years, one of the most innovative projects has yet to commence. Working with the City of Bridgeport, the hospital will work together to improve citywide security measures. As such, the city will be implementing IP cameras with megapixel technology to help monitor its streets and neighborhoods. Under the city’s expanding security infrastructure, it will be able to integrate with IP cameras located at proprietary sites such as St. Vincent’s. This will allow the City of Bridgeport to view neighborhood video in an effort to deter community crime and provide another forensic evidence tool. The Nextiva platform is flexible and allows for easy export of video as required under the specification of City of Bridgeport video surveillance infrastructure.

If you enjoyed this article and want to receive more valuable industry content like this, click here to sign up for our FREE digital newsletters!

Related Content