The Center for Special Surgery (CSS) in Fargo, North Dakota, is a modern outpatient surgical facility with fully equipped operating rooms and private recovery space. However, its video signal-transport infrastructure was damaged last year by a small electrical fire, which necessitated the replacement of much of that cabling and other connective components. It was the ideal opportunity to completely update the setup. The CSS turned to locally based integrator Site On Sound to install new Key Digital products, including four KD-WP8 8-Button Web UI Programmable IP Control Wall Plate Keypads with PoE, eight KD-X2x1WDTx 2x1 4K HDBaseT PoH Wall Plate Switchers, and a total of eight each KD-IP922 Enterprise AV over IP encoders and decoders mounted on a pair of KD-SMS16 Shelf Mounting Systems.
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"We installed KD-WP8 keypads in each of their surgical rooms, as part of the project to replace and update their cabling infrastructure to CAT-6 wire," explained Paul Hagen, lead commercial engineer for Site On Sound, noting that the setup rides on a completely separate LAN in the Center. With PoE (Power over Ethernet) and PoH (Power over HDBaseT) the CAT-6 cabling is all that's needed for control and signal distribution, simplifying the installation. "Now they can pull up video from any of the surgical suites in real time, as well as imaging such as x-rays, on the two or three flat-panel displays installed in each suite. The KD-WP8 keypads really increased the flexibility of the system for users." And it was flexible for the integrator as well. Hagen noted that they were easily able to rename all of the operating keys on the wall plate to reflect the destinations users would be calling up, such as radiology. "Key Digital allowed us to customize the button interfaces for this customer, which is a great value-add for them and us," he said.
Site On Sound was actually updating existing Key Digital components installed several years ago, before AVoIP technology had become widely available. The current range of Key Digital products allowed Site On Sound to bring the existing facility to an entirely new level of operation. "We went with Key Digital for this project for the same reason we've been using them for healthcare facilities before: they're totally reliable and let us feel very confident in using them in a medical environment, which is one of the most demanding applications of all," he says. In fact, this updating of the existing CSS facility in Fargo is what Hagen calls "a trial run" for an even larger installation Site On Sound is preparing for at the customer's new facility in West Fargo: a 90,000-square-foot Class A medical campus that will house multiple clinics, including an urgent care center, onsite pharmacy and second-floor Ambulatory Surgery Center, where programmability and secure operation are critical (crucially, the KD-WP8 is password-protected and accessible from a web browser using a virtual keypad).
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"Using Key Digital products, we'll be able to create a sophisticated and reliable signal-transport infrastructure there with products that offer the kind of durability needed in healthcare environments, where cleaning everything constantly is the norm,' Hagen said. "Key Digital meets and exceeds all of the standards and expectations we have of AVoIP systems, especially for healthcare. It's a great choice."
