By Healthcare Facilities Today

BEAVERTON, Oregon — Biamp Systems, a leading provider of innovative, networked media systems, is introducing the new Vocia® 1.6 with Nurse Call Integration (NCI) at HIMSS 2014. Designed to reduce patient recovery time by creating a more peaceful healing environment, the networked public address and voice evacuation system combines zoned paging and prioritization with simple system supervision to provide critical messaging capabilities without compromising operational effectiveness. 

"High noise levels in healthcare environments negatively impact the patient recovery process," said Graeme Harrison, Executive Vice President of Marketing, Biamp Systems. "With Nurse Call Integration as a key capability in Vocia, Biamp is enabling hospitals to create a more peaceful healing environment by controlling where and when messages are heard, and at what volume level. This is done while integrating with the nurse call system for increased system interoperability."

Part of Vocia's networked public address and voice evacuation system, the Biamp® NCI system enhances the line's professional-grade critical paging capabilities. Engineered to decrease noise levels, reduce alarm fatigue, and increase response times by targeting specific departments within facilities, the system enables zoned paging and prioritization of critical messages to eliminate the disturbance of patients from "all-call" pages. As a result, staff only receives pertinent paging messages, contributing to faster reaction times, quieter hospitals, and a more restful patient environment. 

Created specifically for healthcare facilities, the NCI package enables a direct connection to new or existing supported nurse call systems. Messages are automatically assigned a zone and priority level before being streamed via Ethernet and played over an existing PA network. Playback can include speaking via microphone, pressing a bedside or nurse station button, or selecting preset messages from a digital switchboard. The Vocia-enabled solution consists of the Text-to-Speech Nurse Call Server (TTS-1nc), Message Server (MS-1), and Vocia Output (VO-4e) device. The entire system can also be easily supervised both onsite and remotely, and thanks to a decentralized architecture, eliminates the potential for a single point of system failure.

On display at HIMSS 2014 in Orlando, Florida, the Biamp NCI package will be highlighted alongside the company's Vocia 1.6 platform, which now provides three new hardware devices — the eight channel Vocia Input (VI-8) for analog and digital paging inputs, the VoIP-1 telephone-paging adaptor, and the POTS-1 analog telephone-paging adaptor. Both systems will be demonstrated directly from booth 3515, featuring a code blue button and processor from Rauland-Borg.

More information on Biamp's full line of audio solutions is available at www.biamp.com.