Birmingham City University -
Seacole Building

Requirements

The university devised a program to upgrade the facilities for the clinical skills & simulation training area in the Seacole building located at the Edgbaston City South campus of the university. cSkills was selected as the preferred system and solution to provided video and audio capture and streaming capacility for the upgraded facility.

A project plan was created to last over a period of several months, during which time the following areas would be updated at various stages:

• Anaesthetic Lab
• Operating Theatre
• Recovery Lab
• Midwifery Suites (High Risk and Low Risk)
• Resuscitation Suite
• 2 x Endoscopy Rooms
• Mock-up Flat Area

Working with the main contractor, Overbury, and in conjunction with the university stakeholders, we identified the main requirements of the project which included:

• Multiple cameras to be situated in each room to provide a variety of angles, enabling the capture of high quality video for recording and live streaming
• Microphones positioned around each area, spaced evenly to capture a wide range of audio alongside the video
• The ability to view live and playback any recordings in several of the campus teaching areas
• The ability to view and capture the vital signs generated from a manikin simulator at designated beds in the ward areas
• Audio talkback solution to allow the comms room to communicate to each area
• A phone system to allow calls to be made and captured during a scenario between the simulation areas and the control room

The Solution

• A total of 46 x cSkills 1080p PTZ cameras have been installed across all of the areas providing an array of different options and angles when recording/live streaming
• Drop down microphones are connected back to a digital mixer in each area capture the audio in high quality, and allow the user to fine tune, mute or solo any of the microphone or phone inputs
• Each of the medical environment rooms has a cSkills vital signs interface which allows the user to make a connection from manikin simulator output on a laptop, tablet, iPad etc. into the interface box. The ops screen can then be viewed and captured into the cSkills system and streamed/recorded alongside the camera footage
• The talkback solution comprises of a minimum of 1 speaker in each area for communication from the control room. For example, in the medical environments such as a ward area, there is speaker mounted at the head of each bed. The operator in the control room can use the microphone to act as the voice of the patient, or play background audio to provide a more immersive experience
• The phone system allows calls to be placed between any room within the teaching area, with all calls fed into the audio mix allowing them to be streamed and recorded
• A cSkills video interface was provided in the control room and teaching area. This makes the video and audio feeds from the system available to broadcast over the users preferred online meeting platform such as Microsoft Teams
• The cSkills playback and streamviewer software modules were installed on several University managed laptops. This enables the users to interface to the existing campus AV facilities for the purpose of watching live streams from the teaching area, or a previously recorded session

Summary

With a total of 13 individual areas, all capable of being captured independently, the faculty have a lot of flexibility in how they wish to run a simulation or teaching scenario, using the cSkills solution to capture and stream live around the facility.

Any combination of cameras can be assigned to a stream/recording group, so the user has the ability to run a scenario that invloves movement between the different rooms within the facility, for example, between the ward area and the operating theatre.

The cSkills system is IP based. This made the installation a simple process. With the electrical contractor installing patch points at positions identified during the planning phase of the project, all devices could simply be connected and linked back to our network cabinet in the control room. Scope for expansion had been enabled with the installation of additional network patch points that may be utilised at a later date.