Page 21 - EngineerIt February 2021

MEASUREMENT

A building management system was alarms for post-event analysis and
never designed to provide radiation compliance reporting.
protection or deliver information alarms These local HMIs and alarm
in real-time, or to alert users in the right annunciators alert operators using
location at the right time, or even to physical panels, and their ability to be
operate during a power outage. An alarm networked means they deliver alarms
that sounds in an active area needs to and information at the right place at the
be heard and displayed locally to the right time. Additional remote monitoring
personnel present in the area, as well as functionality means the system can even
being logged on the HMI SCADA system. send alarms via SMS or emails, ensuring
In addition, being able to effectively log that users can respond quickly.
and understand post-event data is What’s more, the real-time nature of
crucial to improving safety and the system provides sequence-of-event
preventing future breaches. (SOE) monitoring. In an emergency,
alarms usually trigger each other, Gary Bradshaw
Towards independence cascading alerts throughout the affected
It’s important that hospitals move away zone. Because this process happens so
from potentially fragmented systems quickly, it can be difficult for operators to traceability for compliance purposes.
towards an independent radiation know exactly where a radiation leak may Hospital managers should consider the
protection and critical alarm monitoring have occurred first. SOE monitoring advantages of moving away from this
system. This is why Omniflex works with historical logging to allow approach, and look towards having an
developed its hospital radiation operators to carry out a complete post- independent radiation monitoring and
monitoring and critical alarm system. event analysis and accurately identify critical alarm system, a choice that will
The system interfaces to all the points of failure. improve the safety of operators, and let
radiation monitors and sensors that Fragmented radiation monitoring and doctors continue to effectively use
make up the radio-nuclide production critical alarm setups may be an easy valuable imaging techniques like PET.
facility, providing local HMI operator choice to make, but they can quickly For more information on how to secure
displays and alarm annunciators as well hamper response times during your hospital facility, download the PET
as logging all the historical data and emergencies and could fail to deliver brochure or visit the Omniflex website. n

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