The Client - Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust
One of the largest general hospital foundation trusts in the UK, serving a population of over half a million, the Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust are responsible for healthcare in Berkshire. This includes running The Royal Berkshire hospital in Reading, UK, which itself employs over 5,000 staff and has an annual budget of £228 million.
As videoconferencing has become more prevalent in the healthcare industry, the NHS trust is adapting to equip its facilities accordingly.
Crossover were engaged by Samsen Technology, who provide IT and technology services and staff for the NHS, to design, supply, install and support videoconferencing and presentation systems for various meeting spaces on the estate. The contract was awarded due to Crossover's proven expertise in delivering high-quality audiovisual and videoconferencing systems for all types and sizes of boardroom, meeting room and event space.
AV and Videoconferencing for Meeting Rooms
The Trust required meetings rooms that offer staff a simple means to use Microsoft Teams, along with high-quality videoconferencing and the ability for users to connect their own laptops for presentation or videoconferencing.
Crossover selected Crestron’s Flex range based on its excellent performance in other similar office and meeting space projects, its certified status with Microsoft and 'native integration' with Microsoft Teams i.e. the system presents users with a familiar Teams interface, running on the touch screen that the user interacts with. Also for a substantial deployment on the Trust's network, importantly the Crestron devices support industry standard security protocols.
In addition, BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) is supported on the system, allowing users to run a software-based conference from their laptop on any other platform (Skype, Zoom, Webex etc), taking advantage of the room’s VC equipment.
An advanced central ‘speakerphone’ with touch panel displaying the familiar Microsoft Teams interface provides users with a point of control for the meetings, as well as high quality audio and microphone capture.
Project Challenges
Crossover worked with Samsen Technology to integrate the Crestron videoconferencing systems into the hospital’s IT network, which presented some challenges due to the network security in place in the building.
Custom home screen graphics were installed on the Creston system, which appear on the room display when the system is not in use.
To help staff operate the AV systems, Crossover provided a customised user guide explaining in simple terms all the main features of the Crestron Flex system.
Further Projects at Royal Berkshire Hospital
With the success of the Crestron systems, Crossover have been engaged to provide Crestron Flex VC systems in a number of other meeting rooms and boardrooms at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.
In one boardroom, where the meeting participants are seated around a wide horseshoe-shaped meeting table arrangement, two QSYS cameras were installed to capture pictures from the room. The cameras automatically view the person speaking the room, based on the direction of sound picked up by a Sennheiser 'ceiling tile' microphone array in the centre of the room.
Photo credit: Royal Berkshire Hospital exterior photo at top of page by Juan J. Martínez from Exeter, UK (CC BY-SA 2.0)
