CAM-127

Corridor closed off by visitors

An admissions corridor with forty-odd visitors closed in a ring, wall to wall. In the middle of the ring there is a trolley with someone lying on it and two professionals in scrubs leaning over; a third, in a white coat, is caught at the edge and cannot get out. On the left, an open bay with a free bed and the monitor on: that is where you have to get to. On the right, the desk with two people behind it. There is no way through: right now a second trolley cannot get in. IRIS counts people and sees where they are; it does not know who any of them are.

CAM-127 · ADMISSIONS CORRIDOR · PASSAGE BLOCKED

What IRIS understands

What it recognises in this scene

corridor with no way through
trolley being attended
professional boxed in
free bay
nurses' station

What this camera measures

An alert says something is happening. The reading says how much.

46People in the corridor
31+14Around the trolley
5 minClosed off for
18Limit for this stretch
4Professionals inside the ring
18:26Time of the alert

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client's measurement.

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

that stretch of corridor holds more people than the hospital has set and the way through stops being clear

Then

alert the station with the camera and the stretch that has clogged up
say how many people there are and since when, so you know who to send
log the time, so the hospital learns what hour that corridor fills up every day

The instruction that set it up«Tell me when the admissions corridor gets so full that a trolley can't get through, and tell me while it is filling up, not once it is already closed off.»

What changes

What changes for whoever runs the ward

There are no culprits here. People gather where the person they love is, and posters do not fix that. What is a problem is that a second trolley cannot get down that corridor right now, that the professional inside cannot get out to fetch supplies, and that the family who has just arrived cannot find anyone to ask. With IRIS the station knows while the corridor is closing up, with the camera, the stretch and how many people are there, and there is still time to open a route and move the waiting somewhere else, calmly. And you are left with the figure for afterwards: what hour it fills up every day — which is what lets you change how visiting is organised instead of pushing people about.

What people usually ask

Does IRIS know who the visitors are?

No. IRIS does not identify anyone: it does not recognise faces, it does not compare them against any database, it does not know who any patient or visitor is, it keeps no file on anyone and it has no access to medical records. Nor does it follow a person from one corridor to another. To know that a trolley cannot get down a corridor you only need to count bodies and see where they are, and that is exactly all it does here.

Is this the same as the room's capacity?

No. Capacity is a limit on the building, measured at the door: how many people are inside. This measures something else — how tightly packed one specific stretch of corridor is — and they are two different figures. A lobby can be well under its capacity and still have a corridor no trolley can get down. The second figure is the one that stops people working, which is why it is the one that matters here.

What if a lot of people is normal at that hour?

The limit is set by the hospital, and it can be different per stretch and per time band. During visiting hours you raise the limit for the lobby, where the crowd is expected, and leave the limit for the trolley stretch as it is, because that has to stay passable at all times. That is what keeps the alert meaningful: if it fires every afternoon at the same hour, within a week nobody looks at it.

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