Medical

2018

INSTALL
OF THE YEAR

BLESSING HOSPITAL
OMNISTREAM NETWORKED AV PLATFORM
STIMULATES SIMULATED HEALTHCARE LEARNING

C r i t i c a l n u r s i n g a n d h e a l t h s c i e n c e p ro g r a m s a t B l e s s i n g-R i e m a n C o l l e g e b e n e f i t f ro m
A t l o n a’s O m n i S t re a m™ AV o v e r I P p l a t f o r m t o e l i m i n a t e o l d e r, m a xe d-o u t a n a l o g
s y s t e m s w h i l e p ro v i d i n g f a s t s w i t c h i n g s p e e d a n d e n s u r i n g f u t u re AV s y s t e m s g ro w t h.
 IP Video
Distribution:
Moving from
Switcher to Switch
The Simulation Center at
Blessing-Rieman is a complete
hospital unit with nine patient rooms
and five control stations, and is
where students are offered
specialized instruction and a
sophisticated learning environment
to master clinical skills. This
includes working with male, female
and pediatric manikins programmed
to mimic medical complications.
Even though the new site
wasn’t quite a brand-new building,

B
lessing Health System is a visible part of the the Southwest AV team was
fabric in the small Midwestern city of Quincy, handed a clean slate to do their integration work.
Illinois. In addition to the 307-bed Blessing “Since we were moving to an existing structure,
Hospital and the charitable, community-focused support the construction team hired by the college handled the
system that comprises the Blessing Foundation, the complete teardown of existing infrastructure, leaving little
growing healthcare organization offers a range of behind but walls and the electrical systems,” said Dustin
educational programs and training services at its own Willis, project manager at Southwest AV. “We came into
private college. a clean facility with a fresh set of system design plans.
Situated close to Blessing Hospital, the The main job was to merge audio systems from the
Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing & Health Sciences previous location with a networked architecture for video,
has been offering these programs and services for more driven by Atlona’s OmniStream™ AV over IP platform.”
than 125 years. To accommodate its own growth, the The college opted for an isolated network to
college recently relocated to a building on 50th and Oak support AV systems, chiefly to work around privacy laws
in Quincy. and other restrictions associated with Blessing Hospital’s
As often happens in these situations, the main network.
organization wanted to salvage some of its existing AV “We established a multicast-capable network
equipment, and integrate those components alongside leveraging off-the-shelf Cisco SG300-52MP managed
new technologies that would better complement today’s switches to ensure that OmniStream could live and
more digitally-focused learning environments. Southwest operate on the IT infrastructure, alongside internet and
Audio-Visual, a Missouri-based systems design and other data traffic,” said Willis.
integration firm that also specializes in AV equipment The primary driver that took Southwest AV down
sales, was hired to achieve this delicate balance in the the IP path started with, perhaps unusually, the switcher
new facility’s educational crown jewel: The Simulation frame size. The previous analog AV infrastructure was
Center. limited to a 32x32 chassis that was long maxed out, and
most digital fixed-frame systems offer
the same capacity. It was clear that
“THE PRIMARY DRIVER THAT TOOK SOUTHWEST AV DOWN THE the new facility would be limited by a
IP PATH STARTED WITH, PERHAPS UNUSUALLY, THE SWITCHER 32x32 infrastructure, as the college
intends to add more rooms within the
FRAME SIZE... THE NEXT NATURAL OPTION WAS AN UPGRADE TO Simulation Center in the coming years.
A 64X64 FIXED-FRAME SYSTEM. WHILE THESE WERE READILY The next natural option was
an upgrade to a 64x64 fixed-frame
AVAILABLE, BUDGET CONSTRAINTS REMOVED THIS OPTION FROM system. While these were readily
THE TABLE. ” available, budget constraints removed
this option from the table.
– Dustin Willis, project manager at Southwest AV

Atlona— Blessing Hospital 2

 “With a feasible IT
infrastructure of network “WOULD THE SYSTEM BE RELIABLE, AND WHAT TRADE-OFFS WOULD
cabling and switches in place
and plenty of bandwidth, we set
THERE BE IN SIGNAL LATENCY AND OVERALL QUALITY? OUR SEARCH
our sights on the quickly EVENTUALLY LED US TO OMNISTREAM AV OVER IP TO PROVIDE ALL
evolving universe of AV over IP,”
said Willis. “However, as an SWITCHING AND DISTRIBUTION NEEDS OVER THE NETWORK.”
emerging approach to applying – Willis
AV technology, particularly on the
video side, we had our share of
and plummeting blood pressure. The student at the
concerns. Would the system be reliable, and what
control station must diagnose and react to these
trade-offs would there be in signal latency and overall
changing medical conditions.
quality? Our search eventually led us to OmniStream AV
Using two-way audio connectivity, students in
over IP to provide all switching and distribution needs
the patient room speak to the “patient”. Voice is captured
over the network.”
over Shure® MX202WP/C ceiling microphones and
The OmniStream many-to-any architecture
transmitted to the nurse’s station over an IP-enabled
proved flexible enough to fulfill the facility’s needs without
Biamp® AudiaFLEX digital audio platform. Instructors
the extra costs and unused capacity that the
listen to the diagnoses over headsets, and respond over
integration team would have been handed with a larger
the bi-directional IP audio link using Biamp paging
64x64 frame.
stations. The paging stations offer all-call and zoned
paging, and simulation of large scale events such as a
Station to Station “code-blue” are also possible.
While the Biamp architecture provides IP
The control stations represent the central activity transport of audio over CobraNet between the nine
of the technical infrastructure. At these locations, patient rooms, five control stations and OR simulation
instructors monitor two camera views and the vital signs room, OmniStream paved the way for cleanly
of each manikin across three displays. Each patient transitioning all video sources and destinations to the
room features a fixed camera at the head of the bed school’s dedicated IT network. The complete
looking downward at the manikin, and a PTZ camera OmniStream installation includes 18 encoders (nine
across the room. Based on a script of triggers, the OMNI-111 single-channel and nine OMNI-112
instructor can initiate symptoms including elevated pulse dual-channel models) and 18 decoders (eleven

Atlona— Blessing Hospital 3

 OMNI-121 single-channel and seven OMNI-122 strokes as students work with video sources.”
dual-channel decoders). With two inputs and two All audio and video sessions are recorded into
network connections, the dual-channel models offer the Sonic Foundry’s MediaSite RL HD digital recording
flexibility to reduce the stream size to preserve network systems. This system includes multiple inputs to ingest
bandwidth, yet retain 1080p quality. content, which then automatically uploads to a cloud
In each of the nine patient rooms, the OMNI-112server. This approach ensures that instructors and
dial channel encoders natively accept the HDMI feeds students to review educational content at a later date.
from the cameras, and distribute them to the Media- “The technical infrastructure in place today will
Site system for recording and live playout over generic accommodate growth (and when required, signal
computers. In most rooms, the computers output the redundancy) without issue as new rooms are added, and
video content into the HDMI input of an OMNI-111 more components are needed,” said Willis. Two
single-channel encoder, which places the video on the additional patient rooms have been carved out that will
be added to the
network at a later
“(THERE IS) VIRTUALLY NO DELAY UPON SOURCE SWITCHING date, and
expansion
COMPARED TO OTHER IP-BASED HDMI SWITCHING SYSTEMS THAT channels exist
TOOK BETWEEN FIVE AND TEN SECONDS TO RE-LOCK SIGNALS UPON in OmniStream
to simplify video
SWITCHING” scalability of the
– Willis network.
“OmniStream
itself can grow until
managed switch. That content is then moved to the switch capacity is reached, which will take many years to
OMNI-121 and OMNI-122 decoders, which output the fill,” said Willis. “In fact, as both cameras in each patient
HDMI signals to 19-inch generic video monitors. room combine into an OMNI-112 Dual-channel encoder
At each control station, instructors can to utilize a single network drop, the overall switch count
manipulate PTZ camera movements, such as zooming was minimized, and there are extra wires for
into an IV pump or the face of a manikin. A separate OR expandability. This architecture required less network
simulation room includes two multiple PTZ cameras for infrastructure and half the hardware, and ensures that all
this purpose, and excludes the fixed camera used in the transmitting and receiving devices can perform double
general patient rooms. duty over a single network connection – an ideal
blueprint to build on as the facility grows moving forward.”
Seamless Networking For
Audio and Video
OmniStream eliminated the latency concerns of
point-to-point transmission of 1080p video between
patient rooms and control stations immediately on
deployment. (4K/UHD sources are supported on
OmniStream and remain in consideration; the current
cameras and recorders at Blessing top out at 1080p)
With sub-frame latency, video moves seamlessly over
the network even as switches re-synchronize to
accommodate new video sources.
“That speed allows us to mirror the analog
functionality of the old system that users were
accustomed to enjoying – virtually no delay upon source
switching,” said Willis. “This is compared to other
IP-based HDMI switching systems that took between five
and ten seconds to re-lock signals upon switching.
O m n i S t r e a m d e c o d e r s m o u nte d d i s c r e et l y n e a r
Instead, students see the camera angles in near n u r s i n g st at i o n d i s p l ay s.
real-time, without blockiness or degradation in resolution;
and no reactive delay in mouse clicks and keyboard

Atlona— Blessing Hospital 4

 PRODUCTS FEATURED

Model D e s c r i pti o n M o re Info r m ati o n

Networked AV encoder for one

HDMI source up to 4K/UHD, plus https://atlona.com/prod-
AT-OMNI-111
embedded audio and RS-232 uct/at-omni-111/
control

Networked AV encoder with two

independent channels of encoding
https://atlona.com/prod-
AT-OMNI-112 for two HDMI sources up to 4K/UHD,
uct/at-omni-112/
plus embedded audio and RS-232
control

Networked AV decoder for an

OmniStream-encoded video
AT-OMNI-121 http://atlona.com/product/
stream up to 4K/UHD, as well as
at-omni-121/
embedded audio and RS-232
control

Networked AV decoder with two

independent channels of decoding http://atlona.com/product/
AT-OMNI-122
for two OmniStream-encoded video at-omni-122/
streams up to 4K/UHD

Fo r m o r e s o l u t i o n s, s e e h t t p: //a t l o n a .c o m /s o l u t i o n s -to u r/

Fo r m o r e a p p l i c a t i o n s, s e e h t t p: //a t l o n a .c o m /c a s e - s t u d i e s /

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