American Healthways gets extensive new AV presentation systems
Nov 10, 2004 5:12 PM
American Healthways gets extensive new AV presentation systems Like most any company contemplating a new AV system and systems control, American Healthways Inc. was looking for specific functionalities coupled with operational ease. But they were also looking for more than just these basics.
“We host quite a few VIP and prospective customer tours at our facilities,” says the company’s Senior Regional Technology Manager, Crockett Watson, speaking almost one year to the day after moving into the company’s new flagship care enhancement center, just outside Nashville, Tennessee. “Our thinking from the ground up was for a fairly sophisticated AV system, but one that anyone could control, and one that would present well.”
The result is a system comprised of four separate but linked systems, corresponding roughly to four areas of a 27,000 square foot corporate suite. Each of the four systems—the Launch Pad/ Training Room, the Call Center/Town Hall, the Visions Room, and the Reception area—is based around a Crestron MP2E master controller operating over the company’s LAN. System functions are all accessed via Crestron’s e-Control and computers in each area running custom software. A Crestron STX-1700C wireless two-way handheld touch panel allows remote control in the Visions Room, the facility’s conference center.
“American Healthways was looking for an upscale boardroom and training facility that would also showcase the technology that they have incorporated into their processes,” says lead systems designer, Jeff Thornhill, of Beacon Technologies in Nashville.
Centrally located in the corporate suite, the Visions Room literally offers a view of how the company has infused technology in its operations. A modestly sized boardroom with a front projection screen, the Visions Room is flanked on either long side by the expansive Call Center on one side, and the smaller Launch Pad/Training Room on the other. Both are visible from the conference room table, but only when the glass on either wall is electronically switched, using the Crestron handheld wireless remote, from opaque to transparent. This is a particularly apposite use of the technology as the Call Center and the Launch Pad represent two dynamic programs in the company’s approach to health care management and enhancement. The Call Center is staffed by health care professionals, who interface with both patients and physicians, and who have all gone through training in the Launch Pad setting.
The Visions room system—front-projection video, room audio, teleconferencing capability, wireless mic transmission, lighting, both wired and wireless communications between laptop computers and the system—is all under control of a Crestron MP2E Ethernet control system multimedia resource controller in combination with a Crestron C2N-MMS high-resolution composite, S-video, and RGB video crosspoint switch. Distributed ceiling loudspeakers and EV program speakers on either side of the front projection screen are driven by a Crestron CNAMPX-2x60 professional audio amplifier.
American Healthways wanted operational simplicity for upper-management boardroom presentations. They had a special need for presentations to the entire staff by management and outside presenters as well. “Basically, they needed a public address system,” says Thornhill, “where from a single position, they could address all the troops with live audio and video and computer presentations.” Watson explains: “In our previous office space, management had to herd all the employees into a warehouse-like space and address them from a simple PA system.” This proved both time-consuming and impractical, especially for Call Center clinicians who are often locked into conversation with a client. The clinicians needed to remain in their seats during these Town Hall meetings.
The solution involved first selecting a “broadcast point”—a corner of the Call Center floor with an active podium from which a presenter can address the entire building—then heavily salting the new space with strategically placed 27” TV monitors. A video camera trained on the podium area and a podium-mounted mic are live sources for the system. Again, a Crestron MP2E functions as the hub.
“Presenters can jack in a laptop to the rack,” says Thornhill, “or, using Crestron e-Control, someone can log onto the Crestron system from one of the work stations on the Call Center floor, and from here control the presentation.” All sources—DVD, laptop, live camera, podium mic, and a wireless mic for staff Q&A—go through the Crestron system and out to all the employees. And no one has to move from his or her desk.
Used for training and continuing education, the Launch Pad system is centered around a Crestron MP2E hub, eControl, and a custom software interface by Beacon Technologies running on any of the 30 computers in the room. Video sources display on a front projection screen, and the presenter is supported by a wireless lav mic and six Clarity ceiling speakers. “Our directive in the Launch Pad was to create the kind of control environment that Crestron does best,” says Thornhill, “a system that will allow selection among multiple sources, and that will be used by various presenters.”
The base systems are expandable and can be networked, and the design is repeatable, with differences, in any of the company’s other care enhancement centers across the country. From both an operational and a presentational standpoint, AV systems at American Healthways deliver exactly what the company wanted.
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