From Saving Lives to Energy Conservation, This Hospital Does it All

After exploring numerous options, including using metering which transmits data using the cellular mobile phone network (which ultimately would be too expensive and only offered data from the past day) the hospital decided to incorporate a solution that leverages the latest long range, low power wireless alternative, LoRaWAN®.

LoRa®, coined from “long- range”, is a proprietary spread-spectrum modulation for low data rate, low power, and long-range wireless communication. It’s an alternative to other modulations and is tailored for the unique requirements needed by the Internet-of-Things. LoRaWAN is the wide area network protocol specification for use with LoRa modulation and is designed for secure bidirectional communication, mobility, and localization services.

In considering possible solutions, Maidstone ultimately opted to work with Synetica Limited, providers of Long-Range Wireless Monitoring Solutions for energy, assets and the environment. Based in the UK, Synetica’s EnLink, specifically enLink Modbus, a LoRa wireless Modbus bridge; enLink Pulse, a LoRa wireless Pulse counter and; enLink Zone, a LoRa wireless environmental sensor measuring temperature, humidity, VOC’s & CO2.

“The Synetica EnLink system was installed in a short space of time and with almost no disruption,” said Barry Leaf, Estates Manager, at Maidstone Hospital. “Most of the installations were carried out in a safe way. The operatives needed a minimum amount of permits to work and certainly no disruptive electrical isolations were required. What’s the best news? We now have a valuable insight into our energy consumption.”

Pivotal to the success of the enLink’s solution is the MultiTech Conduit®, a configurable, manageable, and scalable communications gateway for industrial IoT applications. Each Conduit gateway has the ability to manage thousands of LoRaWAN® compliant devices, including MultiTech mDot™ modules and other sensors and transmit their data over any cellular network to a customer’s preferred data management platform.

“Our decision to work with MultiTech was based on its compatibility with LoRaWAN and its flexibility to support both cloud-based and on-premise network architectures,” said Sean Williams, Director at Synetica. “MultiTech’s IoT gateway is durable enough for the harsh environments we encounter within production sites and is technically advanced and stable. Another factor in our decision was the strong support system in place and our confidence in knowing that the MultiTech team was working in lockstep with us from the initial stage of proposal through customer implementation and maintenance.”  

“We were concerned that our electrical energy requirements throughout our Maidstone Hospital site were not being recorded in a way to allow us to review our loading needs in different locations; the Synetica enLink system allows us to do this,” added Leaf.