Alberta, like most Canadian provinces, faces the challenges that come with serving small, remote communities that have limited resources and are difficult to reach, especially in the harsh winter months. In 2009, the province completely integrated its health care, bringing together 12 formerly separate health authorities in an attempt to provide uniform care. Then in 2010, Alberta Health Services embarked on a province-wide security strategy for its facilities to ensure they all had access to protective services. Pre-integration, less than half of Alberta hospitals had access to security services, but through a new staffing model —the deployment of mobile community peace officers — even the remotest of facilities have access to security. AHS also established a centralized security operations centre in Edmonton, available 24/7 to all sites with real-time communication through a provincial radio system.

“In terms of protective services, our goal is to provide access to service — basically to security services throughout the province, from urban to rural. We want to have a consistency of service and a standard of service,” explains Greg Smith, Director Enterprise Security Systems, Protective Services, Alberta Health Services.

Alberta Health Services also reviewed its use of camera technology to determine how security coverage could be improved. “For example, if the big urban hospitals have access to CCTV and security, why don’t the rural sites? Recognizing this, we wanted to provide this access to rural acute care hospitals,” says Smith.

Smith and his team conducted a review and gathered information on the rural acute care sites — approximately 78 — and prioritized them based on risk. “We needed to find a product that would be reliable, low impact on IT infrastructure and cost-effective.”

The problem with most camera surveillance set-ups is they require significant infrastructure and video storage can serious tax networks.

“You have your camera, your coax, your power supply and it has to go back to a recording device. Or if it’s an IP solution — you’ve got your camera, your CAT6 going to a network switch and then going to a single recording device. Well what happens when you lose your network or your recording device? Well, it brings down your cameras. We’ve experienced that,” says Smith.