The well-being of patients is a leading priority across the NHS. Though this entails ensuring that everybody receives the proper care and attention they deserve, it also extends to providing both staff and patients with a safe, secure environment. Standing in the way of this goal are two central issues: communication and visibility.
The NHS's Physical Security Policy stresses that all staff play a role in safeguarding the people and assets within their workplace from harm, theft and damage. This can be challenging, requiring careful coordination between security teams and broader NHS staff to address incidents quickly and with as much context as possible.
To achieve this, NHS leaders must bridge gaps in visibility and communication caused by legacy systems and fragmented data.
Why healthcare environments pose unique visibility issues
Before we explore how smarter video can improve patient safety, it’s useful first to examine the fundamental issues it addresses.
Hospitals are logistically complex. They contain a mixture of:
- Public spaces that must remain open 24/7
- Restricted areas that house highly expensive medical equipment
- Testing rooms that require frequent sterilisation and monitored access
- Vulnerable elderly and infant patients
- Corridors that see varying levels of footfall
At all hours of the day, multiple locations require constant monitoring, in addition to regular patrols. Without a centralised dashboard and smart analysis, operators are left to manually monitor several screens at once, increasing the risk of burnout and leaving them less agile. The most common causes of patient harm, falls, and acts of aggression, require immediate attention from security staff, but can slip under the radar when systems don’t play an active role in threat detection.
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Real-time visibility can prevent incidents before they escalate
Standard CCTV is largely reactive, used to review incidents after they have occurred. In NHS environments, where falls, wandering and rapid deterioration can be common, patients benefit from more active systems.
Modern IP security cameras with intelligent analytics can identify risk behaviours early, allowing operators to intervene before an incident can cause harm. In a practical setting, this could look like cameras identifying:
- An elderly patient exiting their bed unassisted by staff, or showing instability while they walk
- A child or infant patient wandering without an accompanying adult
- A patient suddenly collapses or lies motionless for an unusual period of time
- Unauthorised access to a restricted area
From there, an immediate alert would be sent to staff in the area, including details and footage of the event, allowing them to act quickly and prevent further harm.
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Enhancing staff safety
While patient safety remains a top priority, staff also require protection. Healthcare personnel in the UK rank among the highest recipients of violence and harassment in the workplace, with thousands of reported incidents each year ranging from verbal abuse to physical assault.
These incidents tend to escalate quickly with little warning, complicated by crowds that obscure vision. Smarter video systems analyse video feeds to detect indicators of aggressive behaviour, such as:
- Sudden crowd formation or unexpected movement patterns, which could signal them either moving away from or towards a threatening presence
- Erratic or confrontational body language
- Fast, targeted movement towards staff or restricted areas
When these patterns are identified, operators can dispatch trained personnel to de-escalate a situation and redirect traffic flow away from the area.
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Supporting infection control and compliance
In the wake of the pandemic, there has been a renewed focus on the prevention and control of infectious diseases throughout NHS sites. Protocols may well be established, but enforcing them consistently is key to combating the spread of infection, a challenge made more difficult by the fast-paced nature of clinical environments.
The World Health Organisation estimates that hundreds of thousands of patients are affected by healthcare-associated infections every year, many of which are preventable. Smart video cameras play a supporting role with non-intrusive monitoring of key compliance indicators, like:
- Whether hand-washing stations are being used appropriately
- The presence of PPE in high-risk areas
- Whether quarantine and isolation boundaries are respected
Cameras are not used to identify individuals acting outside of compliance, but rather to provide an operational view of gaps in measures, presenting opportunities for improvement.
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Improving investigation
Not every incident can be avoided, and in those cases, they must be used as vehicles for learning and improvement. A lack of objective data leads to written reports that centre on recollection and estimation, making it difficult to identify the cause of an issue.
Smart video systems provide time-stamped evidence from multiple perspectives and can automatically tag stored footage within a VMS. When parallel security systems are integrated into smart networks, they can also be paired with access logs and alarm triggers, reducing investigation time and improving the quality of findings.
The Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) outlines the importance of systemic analysis over individual blame in healthcare safety reviews. This approach is made more effective with cameras that can help identify underlying issues, such as:
- Gaps in communication
- Inefficient response
- Unclear escalation chains
- Flaws in environmental design
With compliance and accountability in mind, it must be stressed that the use of video in healthcare investigations should align with data protection regulations, ethical standards and staff engagement practices, ensuring that the focus remains on learning and improvement rather than surveillance.
Safer care, driven by visibility
A study in the British Medical Journal highlights the issues that come from a lack of observance. An NHS trust in Buckinghamshire was found to have higher mortality rates than average, stemming from miscommunications between junior doctors during handoffs and the lack of an early warning system. Research into smart surveillance in healthcare suggests that automated observation systems can reduce response times and improve patient outcomes, demonstrating the potential for video security to serve as a supplementary safeguard, akin to and alongside the National Early Warning System.
NHS leaders do not need surveillance for its own sake. Improving patient safety involves viewing security as an operational support tool, one that eases the burden on staff and enhances day-to-day decision making. Now is the time for the NHS to rethink how visibility is used across its organisations, using technological advances to make a tangible impact on health outcomes for vulnerable patients and valued staff alike.
