Hospital tele-control
1970Bernard FranksHealth and welfare Read the scan at ETOL (PDF) →Read from the scan by machine and not corrected: headlines and words can be misread, and a caption or advert can run into the text. For anything you quote, read the scan.
TWO NEW electronic methods of monitoring working operations are outlined in this month's issue of 'Work Study', the specialist magazine for management and consultants.
At a Bradford-on-Avon rubber plant, photo-electric equipment is used to assess output per man in a process which involves the feeding of batches of hot rubber into an extruding machine.
The rubber emerges strip form ready for further processing.
Sensing heads are fixed on either side of the caged feed into the machine.
These pass signals to a Servis machine time recorder linked to control units which record the passage of rubber into the extruder.
The information provided is used to fix payment as part of an incentive bonus scheme.
The second system, installed in the new Crawley Hospital, Sussex, involves a method by which nurses are kept in constant verbal contact with each other, and with the medical stafi, wherever they are.
The Cas-Com centralized communications system consists of a manned central console unit which shows visually the in relation to every nurse all the wards, toilet facilities, offices etc.
The magazine explains:
'The nurse, when entering a room, indicates her presence by pressing a button on a two-way speech unit on the wall where she is working.
"A call from a patient, through his or her individual two-way speech unit to the console, tells the operator exactly what is required and allows the operator to send the nearest nurse who will come fully equipped to deal with the situation' The article adds that where only a comforting word of reassurance from the operator is needed, the nurse is left free from this burden.
Another advantage is said to be that monitoring of unconscious or incapacitated patients can be done by the operator instead of having a nurse stationed with each individual.
The use of this system, it is said, leaves the nurse 'free to continue with essential duties'.
It is significant that these developments should be outlined in work-study journal.
Some managements consider time - and - motion methods inadequate for policing modern work operations to the exactness needed for maximum output.
They are now looking to electronic monitoring systems to give more intensive control.