Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2021 - ST-10
Applications
Integrated Building Systems for Healthcare Facilities
hen I think about integrated building systems, I jump to commercial
buildings. But it occurred to me that
healthcare facilities could be a very important application. To look into that, I
interviewed Dwight Stewart, Founder
and CTO, Igor, Inc. (West Des Moines,
IA). Igor's flagship product, Nexos, is a
PoE-based IoT smart building platform
that incorporates the hardware, software, and cloud analytics components to
form a digital building 'backbone'.
W
IGOR PoE Lighting Solution Technology Stack
NEXOS CLOUD PORTAL
APIs
AUTOMATIONS
Tech Briefs: What types of facilities
are good candidates for integrated
building systems?
Plugins
NEXOS GATEWAY
Dwight Stewart: Although we're seeing office buildings moving forward,
we're definitely seeing an increase in
healthcare business.
P oE POWER SOURCE
EQUIPMENT (PSE)
Tech Briefs: Could you describe your
system.
Dwight Stewart: Figure 1 illustrates
our system architecture. Nexos is our
centralized IoT platform, which can
interconnect and control disparate technologies and systems within a smart
building, including lighting, safety, sensory, and security. It uses the security and
reliability of the Power-over-Ethernet
(PoE) structured cable technology as its
backbone, while retaining support and
compatibility with other leading market
protocols. As you can see in the figure,
our node is the basic building block of
the system. You can connect any number
of sensors, actuators, and other devices
to a single node, limited only by the PoE
power capacity of 90 watts. If one node
uses less than the full power, it can be
daisy chained to another.
Once you connect a node to the network, it shows up in our on-site software
platform by means of the Nexos gateway.
The gateway integrates all of the devices
on each node with a system of standard
or custom APIs and plugins, as well as the
cloud. The automation functions are all
performed through the gateway, as well.
Tech Briefs: How could this be utilized in a healthcare setting?
NEXOS NODE
SENSORS
LUMINAIRES
WALL
CONTROLS
PLUG LOAD
CONTROL
MOTORIZED
SHADES
OEM & 3RD PARTY EQUIPMENT
Figure 1. The Nexos system architecture. (Image courtesy of Igor, Inc.)
Dwight Stewart: It depends on the
context; let's talk about senior care, and
first look at a resident room. There are
different kinds of facilities: hospitals,
long-term care, independent care, nursing homes, and memory care. In those
different types, you'll have different levels of engagement from the staff.
In the patient rooms, falls are a major
issue. So, one of the things we can do is
have a bed sensor connected to our PoE
node. Then, if someone gets out of the
bed in the middle of the night, our application can turn on the lights, to say 30%
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ToC
brightness, so a person can could see without being blinded by full brightness -
that would make it less likely for them to
trip. There are motion sensors in the bathroom that are typically just used for turning lights on and off. However, if you're
not in bed in the middle of the night and
the motion sensor in the bathroom has
not been activated after a few minutes has
gone by, that's probably a sign you fell.
That, in turn could send an alarm to a
nursing station. This could be implemented by creating a plug-in and loading it into
the local software through an API.
Sensor Technology, March 2021
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Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2021
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2021
Tech Briefs Magazine - March 2021 - Intro
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