American Time Blog

A hospital is the most complex of all facility types, which makes sense when considering the wide range of responsibilities that fall on it’s staff. On one end of the spectrum, a hospital’s mission is the preservation of health and the saving of lives. And of course, there is also the goal of keeping its occupants comfortable and fed while accommodating a parade of visitors.

Authors Owen B. Hardy and Lawrence P. Lammers are often cited in explaining the importance of detail in a hospital: "A functional design can promote skill, economy, conveniences, and comforts. A non-functional design can impede activities of all types, detract from the quality of care, and raise costs to intolerable levels.”

Crucial to a hospitals design is a system for accurate time, and with endless corridors and a wide variety of spaces, the placement of hospital clocks requires special attention too. Whether in a bustling hallway, a patient room, or an operating room, clocks need to be highly visible both for staff and the people they care for. LED digital clocks are well-suited to satisfy this requirement with their large, easy-to-read displays.

There are countless details and documents to complete when planning for a newly constructed building — from what materials are used, to how they are installed, and how the final product functions. Among those requirements, are considerations and specifications for a clock system.

Creating these construction documents is a time-consuming task. Fortunately, companies are making it easier and faster to spec for a variety of needs in many projects. For example, for our EverAlert emergency notification platform we provide a CSI specification that can be dropped directly into the construction documents. It's as easy as that. And these documents will prove beneficial throughout the project for many reasons.

When a patient is rushed to the operating room for emergency surgery, timing is crucial. If the operation doesn't happen immediately, the patient’s life could be at risk. The clocks in the operating room are the most obvious examples of the importance of time synchronization in a hospital. From floor to floor, and from the doctor to the patients, just about every aspect of healthcare relies on synchronized clock systems. Here are some of the key ways precise timing is vital to patients' safety and the operations of a hospital.

We take a lot of things for granted these days...accurate time being one of them. Precise time, whether it's on your phone or from a network of synchronized clocks in the workplace, seems to come so easily. However, if you knew the process involved in getting that correct time, you would be amazed...so here goes.

You're in charge of building a new school or hospital and your to-do list is mounting. There are a lot of items on that list you have a pretty good grasp of...but one item presents more of a challenge: installing a system of synchronized clocks.

Fear not, for here are some FAQs on synchronized clock systems that will make your job easier.

In business, finding a winning formula takes on many forms. Sometimes a single niche product can create profit. In other cases though, a diverse set of solutions may be the key to success. That certainly applies to synchronized clock systems. Sometimes one kind of clock can be best for your system, but in others, a combination of digital and analog clocks might be the right solution for your facility.

When someone mentions Wi-Fi, you may think of the technology that allows us fast and easy access to our smart phones — or heading over to the neighborhood coffee shop where the service works really well. For some of us, fast Wi-Fi access is more important than a reliable car. But Wi-Fi's versatility goes well beyond the consumer level. Businesses, hospitals, and schools are all using it to run their operations more smoothly with accurate time keeping.

The first thing you may think of when envisioning a synchronized network of clocks in a workplace may be that of company employees working together and knowing where to be at all times, whether it's a meeting, lunch break, or a shift change. In a hospital setting, you can add things like the staff arriving in a patient's room at once, or a team of surgeons preparing to do their job together in the same place.

Many devices can be powered by an Ethernet cable that runs overhead or from behind a wall — including clocks. Power over Ethernet (PoE) has become a popular way to provide power and information to Internet Protocol (IP) clock networks for a couple of compelling reasons: saving money and easy installation.

Most of us take certain types of technology for granted — until it's not working for us. We have all probably lost phone service while inside the walls of a warehouse or at the bottom of a parking garage. This can be an annoying inconvenience, but how often has it prevented you from making a deadline or resulted in a loss of revenue?