As a consequence of COVID-19, many hospitals have needed to quickly erect new portable buildings to expand the capacity of certain sensitive areas. This, in turn, has created a requirement to immediately expand the scope of existing CCTV systems to ensure control room operators are able to monitor and react appropriately to any suspicious activity in the vicinity of the new buildings.

New Cross Hospital, which is run by the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust, is just one of many hospitals throughout the UK who are faced with the challenge of ensuring all areas of its campus can be monitored 24/7. Providing 700 beds and employing almost 9,500 staff, it is the largest teaching hospital in the Black Country, having been originally built circa 1900 as a workhouse.

New Cross Hospital (1)

Minimising disruption

The need to install a new 4K camera in a location over 300 metres from the hospital’s control room initially seemed daunting in terms of the cost of laying the network cabling normally needed to transmit ultra-high-definition captured by IP cameras.

“Apart from the cost of the engineering work and the disruption caused by installing the new cabling, it would also have taken several days to achieve,” said Dan Mather, director of Derby-based JKE Security, who have had a long term working relationship with the Trust. “We clearly needed to find a much simpler and cost-effective solution which would enable our clients to take full advantage of the superb quality images captured by 4K cameras and, if necessary, pass evidence of any wrongdoing to police.”

Wisenet P 4K camera

Dan Mather sought advice from Smart R Distribution, the Haverhill based specialist electronic security products distributor. They were able to offer him an assurance that their own brand 602POE-2P single port PoE Ethernet Extender would be able to reliably support a new 4K Wisenet PNP-9200RH dome camera, which Dan had sourced from EET, an authorised Hanwha Techwin Europe distribution partner, by facilitating the transmission of the IP images over the hospital’s existing coaxial cabling.

With the ability to capture outstanding 4K (8 megapixels) images, the H.265 Wisenet PNP-9200RH dome camera is equipped with a 20x optical zoom lens, which together with built-in IR illumination enables users to closely monitor activity up to a viewable length of approximately 200 metres, regardless of the lighting conditions.

The IP66 and IK10 rated Wisenet PNP-9200RH utilises Progressive Scan technology to provide sharp edges on moving subjects and vehicles. It also shares many of the innovative, practical features with other models in the premium Wisenet P series. These include bi-directional audio support, privacy masking, defog and an SD card slot to ensure that video is automatically recorded in the event of network disruption

The Smart R 602POE-2P single port PoE Ethernet Extender has been proven to be able to robustly transmit data over any 2 wire cable, and with the ability to handle a bandwidth of up to 200Mbps, is more than capable of coping with the transmission requirements of the Wisenet 4K camera.

“Although we did not source the camera from Smart R, it could not have been easier to connect it to the Ethernet Extender,” said Dan. “It was truly a case of plug & play, with both devices installed, configured and working within half a day!”
McHale Yard mortuary

Customer satisfaction

Commenting on the successful installation of the new camera, Paul Smith, Head of Security and Car Parking for the Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust said: “It is essential during this challenging time that we are able to continue to provide a secure and safe working environment for all our heroic colleagues who are so compassionately caring for all of our patients and service users during these challenging times. I have been impressed with how quickly various companies within the electronic security supply chain have been able to come together and use their combined expertise to provide us with an effective and cost-effective solution.”