A New Era of Safety: Detecting Suspicious Behavior with Advanced Video Analytics in Hospitals

Hospitals are hectic environments rife with emotions. From patients and loved ones to the medical staff that provide care, every person wrestles with varying levels of fear, anxiety, and frustration. It can be a combustible mix that can create unrest and sometimes violence.  

The numbers are alarming. While healthcare workers make up just 10% of the workforce, they account for almost 50% of all non-fatal injuries due to workplace violence. In fact, in a poll conducted by American College of Emergency Physicians, 91% of emergency physicians said they or a colleague were threatened or attacked in the prior year.

When you factor in offenders seeking out crimes of opportunity, you have an increasingly dangerous environment where layered healthcare facility security is as critical as ever. With cutting edge technology and improvements in artificial intelligence, advanced video analytics are now driving the fight against potential threats in hospitals.

Unique Challenges of Healthcare Security

Healthcare facilities have distinctive qualities that make security particularly difficult. The combination of the following security challenges shows why: 

• 24/7 Facilities: Around the clock foot traffic means people are perpetually in motion. With so many visitors, patients, and hospital staff, surveillance can be challenging, if not overwhelming.
• Active environments: Areas of the hospital such as emergency rooms are often chaotic. It leaves parking lots, entrances, and secure areas open to distractions and security breaches.
• Vulnerable populations: Patients are often in weakened and vulnerable states. They can be compromised physically, emotionally, and mentally which can make them more susceptible to become victimized.  
• Medical supplies and medications: Hospitals provide and store pharmaceuticals, medications, and supplies that can often be in high demand. These are particularly attractive to criminals who are looking to obtain them for personal use or to turn around and sell illegally for profit.

With a distinct security environment, you need a formidable security solution. Enter the power of advanced video analytics.  

The Advanced Analytics Advantage

Security systems that solely utilize fixed cameras to simply record are outdated and by itself ineffective. Today’s solutions offer a mix of stationary surveillance and mobile security units that not only provide better coverage, visibility, and flexibility but with artificial intelligence, it provides a “brain” behind the brawn of the security system. 

Strengthening the Perimeter 

It’s no secret that when it comes to protecting what’s inside a building, it starts with a proactive approach on the outside. With so many access points starting from the parking lots and garages and flowing towards a hospital’s various entrances and ambulance bays, it can be nearly impossible to discern who is a legitimate visitor and who is up to no good.

However, security units powered with AI are now able to analyze and identify behaviors that seem out of the ordinary and indicators of potential security threats. Things like individuals loitering for abnormally long durations, cars circling suspiciously in a parking lot, or multiple people gathering in an aggressive manner can be precursors to problems and flagged. Advanced analytics can not only recognize these instances developing in real-time but automatically take immediate actions to address them.

Active responses may involve triggering strobe lights, alarms, a loudspeaker warning, or mobilizing security personnel and authorities. Furthermore, each action like a loudspeaker warning can be personalized to identify what the person is wearing, where they are standing, and what action they would like them to stop to create a heightened sense of vigilant monitoring and urgency.  

Mobile security units can be particularly useful here as their transportability allows them to be repositioned and allows flexibility to provide additional support where needed. They can also scale easily and be integrated seamlessly with other existing security infrastructures such as access control systems, other video surveillance, and mass emergency notification systems.  

Keeping Track of Patients

The focus of all hospitals and medical care facilities are the well-being of its patients and ensuring that they are in spaces where treatment, recovery, and safety are priorities. Advanced analytics, with its ability to gather and analyze massive amounts of data rapidly allows for security to get a quick assessment and security status of the facility and its inhabitants. The ability of security systems to expeditiously gather, process, and extrapolate information from their entire network of surveillance along with AI-powered tools like facial recognition (LVT’s® surveillance solutions do not use facial recognition), the ability to identify specific characteristics like those in a wheelchair or walking with a medical device to those moving erratically can help keep tabs on patients who might need assistance. Additionally, it can be extremely helpful in flagging, tracking and locating patients that might be disoriented or have wandered off in confusion or duress.

Protecting Staff and Secure Areas

Hospitals are primarily here to help patients get better, but the safety and protection of the medical professionals are of no less importance. With so many areas in the hospital accessible to visitors and the public, it’s imperative that secure areas are safeguarded so that doctors and nurses can provide critical care to those in precarious situations. Advanced analytics can work with surveillance cameras, keycard systems, biometric data, and other security measures to help identify potential breaches or any anomalies that might arise. This ability to quickly identify potential breaches ensures that only authorized individuals are entering secure areas but creates another layer of reinforcement, which can also lead to quicker remedies and better outcomes.

Limiting Liability

One of the very real downsides to any business or entity in the public sector is the prospect of illegitimate litigation through frivolous lawsuits or bad-faith litigation. With advanced video analytics, any account from an alleged victim or an eyewitness can easily be discredited or corroborated. Incidents can quickly be recalled and utilizing AI, all the appropriate video feeds can create a video timeline showing the actual events in real-time. 

In cases of legitimate litigation focusing on disputes and disparate versions of events, AI-powered video analytics can help clarify conflicting accounts. AI can search, playback, and verify narratives that may have been compromised by time, mental clarity, or errors.

Healthy Security 

With so much activity and with so much at stake at healthcare facilities, it’s essential to maintain a peaceful and safe environment for patients and medical staff alike. Doctors and nurses can focus and perform their jobs optimally while patients can recover peacefully with minimal stress leading to better medical outcomes.  

However, better medical outcomes are dependent on better overall healthcare facility security. Security that is comprehensive, multi-faceted, and utilizes the latest in cutting-edge innovation. AI-powered security systems such as ones in LVT’s mobile security system are bringing traditional reactive surveillance into a new proactive era of predictive analysis and early identification of potential threats.

They are the ultimate self-contained surveillance system capable of securing large outdoors spaces and perimeters no matter how many access points. While they can serve as independent systems, they can be easily integrated with existing security tools all while being able to scale to the changing and challenging security landscape. To see how LVT can help you leverage advanced analytics to your security solution, reach out for more information or to schedule a demo.