ICONICS is improving patient care with smarter buildings

Centre for Psychiatry Südwürttemberg deployed the automation software solution provider’s SCADA and automation suite to improve building management

By Alice Chambers on 26 May 2022

ICONICS

The Centre for Psychiatry Südwürttemberg (ZfP), located in Germany, offers differentiated and comprehensive healthcare that focuses on innovative treatment and professional care for mentally ill patients.

The ZfP has a social mandate to advise, treat and care for people with mental, psychosomatic and neurological illnesses and impairments. Operating specialist clinics, outpatient departments and medical care centres, ZfP requires a high standard of building management to provide the best possible treatment and care for its patients in an appropriate environment.

ZfP’s initial building management software solution was struggling to keep up with the nearly 15,000 data points and 500 overviews and plant displays, making it difficult to manage its multiple locations. The out-of-date system could not adequately process the substantial amount of data resulting in delayed data analysis and an inability to show real-time building environmental conditions. These limitations frequently led to emergency personnel meetings.

To manage the centre’s 157 buildings, administrators needed more modern and advanced building control technology. Working with system integrator Mesalogic, ZfP selected the ICONICS GENESIS64 HMI/SCADA and building automation suite, which communicates with Microsoft Azure for advanced internet of things and cloud integration. The centre also chose to use ICONICS’ data historian, which integrates with Microsoft’s SQL Server, and KPIWorX self-service dashboard application for real-time and historical data.

GENESIS64 is now used for visualising the process data of the entire instrumentation and control engineering system, including heating, ventilation and air conditioning. Facility management personnel use the system to monitor and coordinate all 157 buildings centrally from ZfP’s administrative headquarters in Bad Schussenried, Germany, providing access to the software from anywhere through a web browser or mobile application. Control processes are optimised with historical process data and energy flows are recorded for efficient energy management. The system utilises ICONICS’ unified visualisation technology to display information from the multiple modules on a single screen for administrators and plant managers. If a manual entry is made, the system sends an automatic email notification to a selected group of recipients. The ZfP’s new portal includes extended alarm management as well as drag-and-drop functions for interactive and necessary analysis.

Now the centre can control the multiple buildings spread across the region with an intelligently parameterised set of displays that show the current state of any building. The ZfP has greatly benefitted from upgrading its old, faulty system to a modern and efficient visualisation system.

This article was originally published in the Spring 2022 issue of Technology Record. To get future issues delivered directly to your inbox, sign up for a free subscription.