The new setup encourages both visitors and staff about the hospital's enhanced training sessions.
By D. Craig MacCormack
November 13, 2011
Given how respected Englewood Hospital and Medical Center has become for its treatment of heart attack survivors and its work with bloodless surgery, it was a bit alarming how little attention the staff had paid to the circa 1980 auditorium A/V system that had become so unreliable, it was often left on around the clock.
When Assurity Design Group began its design and consultation in spring 2009 on the auditorium upgrade, they saw an analog projector with no digital connections available and an A/V system that was to the point it could only be turned off in the mechanical room, so staffers just left it on to avoid the complication for the dilapidated setup.
EHMC has become renowned as a world-class teaching hospital, so officials knew they had to replace the antiquated system in the 233-seat space.
“It sounded bad and it looked bad,” says Assurity’s Bill Schafer says. “They couldn’t run the system without constant feedback squealing through that place. It was somewhat of an embarrassment for them.”
About six months later, a the hospital was home to a state-of-the-art A/V system, an energy-efficient lighting system, and a more modern lectern.
Inside The Overhaul
Originally, hospital officials had hoped to do the upgrade in stages, focusing on A/V improvements first, but they acquiesced about two weeks before installation began and decided to also fix the acoustics, seating and lights as part of the project, Schafer says.
“We had to do the design work quickly and expedite some of the contractors,” he says. “We had all hands on deck. There were some 20-hour days and everyone was here all at once.” Just to add a bit more intensity to the timetable, the hospital was scheduled to host a training session about two weeks after the installation began.On top of that, the lighting system was bound by plaster to its existing locations but needed to be replaced. Edison Price created custom fixtures and sped up the manufacturing by several weeks..
Among the highlights:
- Using Crestron’s fiber optic DM transmission solution and a BI AMP Audia DSP audio processor, Assurity created a digital A/V system. Connections to all video format types (HDMI, VGA, display port, composite video, and component video) are all available from the custom designed and built lectern as well as the control booth. A Digital Projections D-Vision projector and Stewart film screen are powered by a Crestron DVP-HD Digital Video Processor. Programs now can be streamed live or recorded for later viewing with the Sonic Foundry Media sight.
- Existing incandescent 150 wall light fixtures were replaced with new energy efficient compact fluorescent fixtures by Edison Price. The old fixed theatrical PAR lights were replaced with Elation moving head theatrical lighting with full DMX integration. Older T12 fluorescent accent lights were replaced with Acclaim RGB LED strips.
- The old dimming and switching system was replaced with a new Crestron Greenlight lighting control system. The new system increased the number of presets from four on the old system to 20+ on the new systems. The client now has the ability to create custom scenes on the fly for special events without the need to hire a programmer.
- A new custom designed lectern for their specific purpose was created and built, providing more space for paperwork, laptop and a 17-inch touchpanel for control. Hidden away is a Samsung HD document camera for display of special documents or objects.
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