Healthy parking development

Parking is high on the agenda when it comes to enhancing hospital facilities, developing new initiatives and delivering targets. Yet with government budget cuts and a greater focus on improving standards, there’s increasing pressure on local authorities and commercial organisations to deliver cost-effective and efficient parking solutions that meet the needs of a diverse range of users.

Bringing together the interests of hospital car park users including staff, visitors and patients, in addition to those of an NHS trust and its stakeholders, can be extremely challenging yet an increasing number of hospital premises are moving from traditional methods of parking management to more technologically advanced systems. An integrated approach to management is thriving in the healthcare sector, enabling such critical infrastructures to run more effectively.

Improved integration
The trend for Internet Protocol (IP) integrated parking systems started a few years ago and it is fast becoming the set standard within the healthcare sector. Fully IP-based parking systems have set the tone for modern solutions because they allow complete integration of both video and audio, with the facility to utilise cameras, phones, access control readers and intelligent input/output modules. Such products can be easily incorporated into modern parking systems, which creates a user-friendly and cost-effective system for hospitals. The technology also allows authorised users secure remote access from anywhere in the world in order to remotely intervene, update features, access intercom linked to CCTV and monitor alarms by way of e-mail messages for specific requests or maintenance enquiries.

For many hospital trusts the need to transfer data is paramount for improving and developing procedures. The electronic exchange of medical, financial and administrative data information across healthcare orientated computers is already promoted by international standards such as Health Level 7 (HL7), so the installation of parking systems with IP technology further enables hospitals to link data with management systems already in place.

By utilising links between car park systems and hospital management systems, the control of staff parking is dramatically improved, which also allows better optimisation of visitor parking. In addition, it becomes easier to manage hospital access times as parking requirements can be linked to staff working hours, leaving more spaces available for visitors.

The bottom line
Improving parking is not just about providing better services to staff and visitors, but for many it is considered as financially beneficial. By installing a more advanced system, car park financial data can be passed directly to the hospital’s accounts department, avoiding the costly delays of manual inputting of data and human error.

All standard equipment works on the basis of Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and IP by means of LAN/WAN network that are connected to a server. Separate systems that normally need external connections become redundant and this can also provide large financial advantages with fewer investments necessary in equipment and wiring.

Technology you can see and hear
The move to video and audio offers added benefits to hospital management and users. The use of intercom and IP cameras for video surveillance can increase the feeling of security and improves the services provided to users of the parking facility. During the day, calls via intercom can be connected to the corresponding camera so that in a simple manner the service can be insured. For night time usage, both the audio and image can be connected through to a guard service, so the same service level can be maintained.

Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) can also be incorporated directly into the parking system using independent ID cameras. This not only improves the functionality available to the car park manager, including scenarios such as control of lost tickets for visitors with the number plate linked to the ticket, but season card access can also be improved using the number plate as the primary identification.

Written by Amano UK