Forward-thinking health-care facilities see patients as their No. 1 priority; therefore, their facility-automation systems should support a “patients-first” agenda. Integrating building systems with critical patient-care and caregiver-support systems can have a positive effect not only on patients and their care, but hospitals and their financial health.

TECHNICAL INTEGRATION

Technical integration enables systems to exchange information and act on requests, improving data quality and decision making. Physical connections among systems facilitate network sharing, often reducing installation and lifetime-maintenance costs. The benefits of information sharing become a reality when data are shared on a network.

With technical integration, product or system features are combined to achieve solutions that bring value and serve a variety of technology-based agendas, such as indoor-air quality (IAQ). A critical element that must be controlled to ensure a patient's quality of care, health-care-facility IAQ is regulated by a hospital-accreditation body. Therefore, air-handling data must be captured and reported to ensure compliance. No matter how cutting-edge a discrete system might be, more important is what happens to the data and the solutions such systems provide.

For example, to affect energy-savings strategies in a hospital, information from myriad sources (and systems) needs to be acted on via knowledge-based technologies or human intervention. Decision-making is not static; data must be collected and processed through effective graphics and reports so facilities personnel or automated alarm-management and escalation routines can react appropriately to critical failures.

SO MANY SYSTEMS, SO LITTLE TIME

The two basic building-automation goals are system (and, therefore, facility) knowledge and facility control (Figure 1). With system knowledge obtained from building automation, facility managers are able to make decisions that can have positive impacts, such as reduced energy costs, the enabling of proactive maintenance, and the tracking of system activity and defects, on facility operations.

Integrated control lets building managers approach facility management with a “hands-off” mentality. A facility can operate itself optimally and efficiently, alerting facility management and staff when conditions requiring intervention occur.

BUILDING-AUTOMATION TOOLS

Building-automation tools can be broken down as follows (Figure 2):

• Information-visualization access, which provides a human interface.
• Integration, which provides intersystem and intrasystem connectivity.
• Instruments, which provide electronic-sensor information or inputs.
• Controls, which serve control and algorithm functions.
• System infrastructure, such as wiring, modems, personal computers, Ethernet hubs, etc., which provides the physical infrastructure needed for systems to communicate and operate.