August 5, 2020 - In the AV world, business development folks are always looking for new opportunities. One of the big challenges we face is that like all technology sectors, any new technology starts out as a unique, specialized and complex thing. And over time, it goes through an arc from innovation through to commoditization. And we have seen this in everything from displays to videoconferencing. So, in order to stay profitable and keep growing, we have to always be seeking out new business categories to grow into. One big category is Healthcare. Unfortunately, as you dig into healthcare, people frequently only see one application and it has a tendency to scare them off. This of course, being the operating room systems. The reality is that these are out of reach for most due to the fact that there is all manner of FDA compliance issues, and specialties involved and this is why there are only a few companies that deal with them. Even when it comes to products, they have to be FDA approved and as such, it's a niche market that most don’t even try to get into.
This is not the end of it though as there are many other opportunities in the world of healthcare. One great example that has exploded in the era of Covid and beyond is telemedicine. Six months ago, it took a few days to see your doctor in many cases. and the reality was that just going to the doctor's office could be a bit of a pain. All of a sudden, we can get an appointment within 24 hours and it’s a video appointment. All this infrastructure presents many opportunities and even just building packages to equip doctors with better cameras and audio experiences alone is a huge opportunity!
Making use of telemedicine is not just due to the need to reduce direct contact due to concerns of spreading the virus, but also due to the shifting nature of modern hospitals. This brings us to a huge opportunity... the central operations center in the modern hospital. As modern medicine continues to get more and more complex, with individual systems sometimes costing into the millions, we are seeing ever-increasing consolidation of healthcare providers. This has resulted in ever larger hospital facilities being developed that consolidate the resources and specialists that once occupied many smaller hospitals. All of this means that a modern hospital has to manage the daily comings and goings with the same level of detail and efficiency once only seen in moon launches.
As hospitals have gotten much larger, and as the needs of efficiency have become ever more critical, more and more we are seeing complex operations centers at the heart of these mega hospitals that track and deal with a landscape that is constantly shifting. To run a mega hospital effectively, you require strong situational awareness. And this means that you need ever clearer visibility into a sea of data. The modern hospital has staffing dashboards to ensure all the various staff requirements are met while we see changes in weather, local accidents and all manner of issues that can affect needs on a day to day basis. They need to keep tabs on how many beds they have available, how many operating rooms, and like a massive hotel, what has been cleaned and needs to be cleaned. Except in the case of a hospital, lives may well hang in the balance. Keeping track of food deliveries and everything that goes along with this. And of course, all the various security concerns that come with treating a population that does not always have their basic needs met. All the while, coordinating and monitoring what's going on in the world outside the island that is this hospital. And all of this... was PRE Covid-19!
Like so many other organizations, they face a daily onslaught of data and changing conditions and the only hope a modern hospital has in managing all of this is the ability to visualize the data. To be able to put up dashboards and cameras and analytics that allow them to see what is going on in all quarters and be able to draw insights and start acting before an issue becomes critical. Only with the visualization one can get from a large display wall can all parties see what's going on and have a chance to make sense out of the daily mayhem. Think about things like a power outages, natural disasters, or even a fire. In our regular jobs we go outside and wait for the fire department or police, or just rummage until we find some candles and flashlights. A hospital CANNOT shut down. You have patients on life support, operations in progress, people in the ICU... you need to mitigate issues ASAP and ensure that the overall operations are affected as little as possible. This is where Jupiter comes in. Using the Catalyst family of processors, you can offer your clients the security, the reliability, the resiliency they need in an environment like this. With almost limitless inputs and outputs, and the ability to hot swap components, you can ensure that there will almost never be down time. And no matter if their needs expand and change over time, they can have the confidence that Jupiter will be able to meet those requirements. Whether it's one huge command center with a big video wall at its heart, or a smaller solution with a series of war rooms to deal with various sub systems of the hospital, Catalyst can do whatever is needed.
But having a bunch of resilient video walls is not enough... Healthcare environments can be even more challenging than the aforementioned moon launch as unlike an organization like NASA, where everyone concerned is likely in the same room and able to make the critical decisions needed in a timely fashion, in a hospital, people can be on the go at all times. You might have some doctors in operating rooms; a head nurse could be responding to a staffing shortage in a pediatric ward, and the head of security might have been called in to assist with a patient having an episode in the emergency room. These are the kinds of challenges that require us to get creative in order to fulfill their needs. With a platform like Canvas from Jupiter, even though those critical decision makers might be somewhere else in the hospital (or maybe it's an administrator who is at home at the moment) it doesn’t matter! With Canvas, you can ensure that they are seeing the same thing that is on display in the operations center. After all, what good is a massive investment in data visualization if the key people cannot see it. With Canvas, anyone on the network (local or VPN) can see whatever you need them to see and can push that critical dashboard or the camera feed to or from their laptop, tablet or even their phone.
Making the right decision is never easy. In fact, it feels nearly impossible at times. So, it's important to understand that the key to making the best decisions you can in the moment, is having the facts at your disposal. Being able to visualize your entire situation is critical. Only then do you have a chance to see the optimal outcome. It's true for the military in fast paced fluid environments, it is true for enterprises navigating critical situations and its true in a modern hospital.
The modern healthcare environment has changed and will continue to change. And you can be assured that with a partner like Jupiter Systems, you will always have the tools you need to present your clients with options that allow them to define solutions that are not just robust and resilient... but immensely flexible as well. Please reach out to your Jupiter sales representative and they can help you design solutions for all your customers.
by Justin Shong
