Creating a life-saving environment through the IoT-enabled EcoStruxure architecture and platform
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- EcoStruxure for Healthcare
- EcoStruxure Power Monitoring Expert
- EcoStruxure Asset Advisor
- Schneider Electric Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS)
- Schneider Electric switchgear equipment
Tech Stack
- IoT
- Real-time Monitoring
- Data Analytics
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Connectivity Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Healthcare & Hospitals
Applicable Functions
- Facility Management
Use Cases
- Building Automation & Control
- Predictive Maintenance
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Nemours Children’s Hospital (NCH) in Orlando, Florida is a renowned, state-of-the-art hospital that provides care for children with the most-complex illness and diseases. The hospital is just five years old but already, families seeking world-class pediatric care have come from more than 70 different countries. NCH, part of the Nemours Children’s Health System, was designed through close consultation with families, many of whom had extensive experience with the pediatric health system. “We see many patients from all over the world,” said Nelson Roque, Director of Facilities and Operations for Nemours. “Some of our kids unfortunately are here for many weeks and months at a time.” From the way rooms are organized to be as homelike as possible, to the special visits from characters from our local theme parks, everything at Nemours is designed to create a calm, comfortable, and efficient place of recovery for the children and their families. This attention to excellence extends to the hospital’s world-class medical technology, and even to the electrical system that powers this technology and the building itself.
The Challenge
Nemours Children’s Hospital (NCH) in Orlando, Florida is a renowned, state-of-the-art hospital that provides care for children with the most-complex illness and diseases. The hospital is just five years old but already, families seeking world-class pediatric care have come from more than 70 different countries. For hospitals, a pure, continuous source of power in a healing environment is essential. It not only provides reliable electricity for equipment to function 24/7, it also provides staff, patients, and parents with the constant peace-of-mind necessary to maintain a successful recuperation environment. Electricity is the fuel that runs the hospital. To create the power system at Nemours, the hospital called on a team consisting of Schneider Electric EcoXpert and other technology partners. Through collaboration, innovation, and expertise, these four firms combined resources to make the Nemours vision for reliable power a reality.
The Solution
The team developed a 3-tiered power system: critical power for operating theaters and essential medical devices; equipment power for AC, heat, and less critical medical equipment; and convenience power for lighting and amenities in non-critical locations. Incoming electrical power is treated, cleaned, and diverted to the relevant areas and equipment across the hospital, ensuring that sensitive medical equipment receives the precisely the power needed. The system is monitored in real-time by the hospital facilities team. Using EcoStruxure Power Monitoring Expert and Asset Advisor software, the team can use graphical interfaces to view status, generate reports, and identify potential problems before they affect safety or operational efficiency. Resilience is built into the system. If Nemours ever experiences a power loss, generators automatically fire up and restore full power within ten seconds across the hospital. Schneider Electric switchgear equipment transfers power to the hospital circuits, monitoring and controlling power levels to ensure proper distribution of energy to medical equipment, lighting, and utilities. While ten seconds to power is rapid response, it is not fast enough in some cases. To fill this gap, Schneider Electric Uninterruptable Power Supplies (UPS) provide immediate battery backup for sophisticated critical assets such as incubators, life-support machines, operating theatres, radiology equipment, and data center.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Hospital Inventory Management
The hospital supply chain team is responsible for ensuring that the right medical supplies are readily available to clinicians when and where needed, and to do so in the most efficient manner possible. However, many of the systems and processes in use at the cancer center for supply chain management were not best suited to support these goals. Barcoding technology, a commonly used method for inventory management of medical supplies, is labor intensive, time consuming, does not provide real-time visibility into inventory levels and can be prone to error. Consequently, the lack of accurate and real-time visibility into inventory levels across multiple supply rooms in multiple hospital facilities creates additional inefficiency in the system causing over-ordering, hoarding, and wasted supplies. Other sources of waste and cost were also identified as candidates for improvement. Existing systems and processes did not provide adequate security for high-cost inventory within the hospital, which was another driver of cost. A lack of visibility into expiration dates for supplies resulted in supplies being wasted due to past expiry dates. Storage of supplies was also a key consideration given the location of the cancer center’s facilities in a dense urban setting, where space is always at a premium. In order to address the challenges outlined above, the hospital sought a solution that would provide real-time inventory information with high levels of accuracy, reduce the level of manual effort required and enable data driven decision making to ensure that the right supplies were readily available to clinicians in the right location at the right time.
Case Study
Gas Pipeline Monitoring System for Hospitals
This system integrator focuses on providing centralized gas pipeline monitoring systems for hospitals. The service they provide makes it possible for hospitals to reduce both maintenance and labor costs. Since hospitals may not have an existing network suitable for this type of system, GPRS communication provides an easy and ready-to-use solution for remote, distributed monitoring systems System Requirements - GPRS communication - Seamless connection with SCADA software - Simple, front-end control capability - Expandable I/O channels - Combine AI, DI, and DO channels
Case Study
Driving Digital Transformations for Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices
Diagnostic devices play a vital role in helping to improve healthcare delivery. In fact, an estimated 60 percent of the world’s medical decisions are made with support from in vitrodiagnostics (IVD) solutions, such as those provided by Roche Diagnostics, an industry leader. As the demand for medical diagnostic services grows rapidly in hospitals and clinics across China, so does the market for IVD solutions. In addition, the typically high cost of these diagnostic devices means that comprehensive post-sales services are needed. Wanteed to improve three portions of thr IVD:1. Remotely monitor and manage IVD devices as fixed assets.2. Optimizing device availability with predictive maintenance.3. Recommending the best IVD solution for a customer’s needs.
Case Study
HaemoCloud Global Blood Management System
1) Deliver a connected digital product system to protect and increase the differentiated value of Haemonetics blood and plasma solutions. 2) Improve patient outcomes by increasing the efficiency of blood supply flows. 3) Navigate and satisfy a complex web of global regulatory compliance requirements. 4) Reduce costly and labor-intensive maintenance procedures.
Case Study
Harnessing real-time data to give a holistic picture of patient health
Every day, vast quantities of data are collected about patients as they pass through health service organizations—from operational data such as treatment history and medications to physiological data captured by medical devices. The insights hidden within this treasure trove of data can be used to support more personalized treatments, more accurate diagnosis and more advanced preparative care. But since the information is generated faster than most organizations can consume it, unlocking the power of this big data can be a struggle. This type of predictive approach not only improves patient care—it also helps to reduce costs, because in the healthcare industry, prevention is almost always more cost-effective than treatment. However, collecting, analyzing and presenting these data-streams in a way that clinicians can easily understand can pose a significant technical challenge.
