Hospital under watchful lens of new CCTV cameras (From Echo)

Hospital under watchful lens of new CCTV cameras

7:00am Sunday 17th October 2010 in News By Katy Islip

PATIENTS, visitors and staff at Southend Hospital are now being watched over by a new high-tech CCTV system designed to allow instant response in an emergency.

Installed by video-systems manufacturer Mobotix AG, the 150 cameras across the site in Prittlewell Chase, Westcliff, are anticipated to help protect more than one million people every year.

The cameras join a range of other new security measures at the hospital, which include barrier entry, number plate recognition for vehicles and voice-call help points across the 87,770-square-metre site.

Kevin Chinnery, head of security for Southend NHS trust, said: “Many people think of CCTV as just a security measure, but we have also used it to find a confused elderly patient who wandered out of a ward, to ascertain the cause of several traffic accidents in a car park, for staffing issues and to help the police in several on-going investigations.”

The camera network operates in conjunction with the hospital’s 25-strong security team, who can pull up the high-quality footage at a moment’s notice, and copied onto memory sticks or discs for the police if needed.

More reliable than the previous system, the hospital is also finding the new arrival is helping lower costs after the hospital’s car parking was given a Park Mark safety rating by police.

Mr Chinnery said: “The quality of our CCTV is also reducing some of our insurance costs, especially around our car parking which has been awarded Park Mark status.”