Georgia Medical Center administers Avigilon’s surveillance system in its facilities

Avigilon, the performance and value leader in high definition and megapixel video surveillance systems, announced that Southside Medical Center, Georgia's oldest and largest Federally Qualified Health Centre, has deployed the Avigilon High Definition (HD) surveillance system to boost patient and staff safety. Facing many security challenges including gang-related activities, on-site domestic violence, disputes among patients, vandalism, break-ins, and theft, Southside Medical Center selected the Avigilon HD surveillance system because it delivers superior image clarity to capture the evidence required to identify, confirm, and convict.

"We are in a new era," said David M. Williams, MD, Chief Executive Officer at Southside Medical Center. "We are moving forward with our plans to have the nation's first Federally Qualified Health Centre of Excellence and having state-of-the-art technology will help us achieve our goal in an efficient and reliable manner."

Southside Medical Center installed Avigilon Control Center network video management software (NVMS) with HD Stream Management on three Avigilon HD network video recorders. One Avigilon 16 megapixel camera, in addition to several Avigilon 11 and five megapixel cameras, were installed on the exterior of the facility for perimeter monitoring. Nine Avigilon analogue video encoders were used to integrate the existing 28 analogue cameras into the new Avigilon HD surveillance system, creating a hybrid system that facilitates the migration from analogue to digital as budget allows.

"Our previous analogue-based surveillance system produced grainy and monochrome images, and could not zoom effectively to capture the image detail needed for positive identification," explained Barlon Lundgren, JD, CHPA, and Director of Corporate Affairs at Southside Medical Center. "With the Avigilon HD surveillance system, we can retrieve exact image details twice as fast as we could with our previous system leading to faster, more cost-effective, and successful investigations."

Leveraging the Avigilon Control Center NVMS Southside Medical Center can easily export footage to enable law enforcement officials to review it without having to install Avigilon Control Center software on their own system. Requiring lesser additional equipment than other systems, the Avigilon HD surveillance system was easily integrated with the medical centre's existing infrastructure, resulting in lower installation costs. Further cost savings were realised by being able to achieve greater coverage with fewer Avigilon megapixel cameras. The management team has also saved operational costs by leveraging the Avigilon HD surveillance system to monitor and resolve conflicts between patients and staff.

"Using Avigilon Control Center NVMS with high definition stream management, Southside Medical Center can preserve their investment in existing analogue cameras and add megapixel cameras as budget allows to dramatically improve the performance of the entire video surveillance network," said Dave Tynan, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing for Avigilon. "Now, the medical centre can cost-effectively migrate from analogue to digital and dramatically improve the forensic value of the video for faster and more successful investigations."