Dutch Medical Center Builds State-of-the-Art Lab on Black Box KVM Solution

Background

KVM systems have become critical to sophisticated control room operations dealing with a variety of critical sources, and diagnostic laboratories and their control rooms are no exception. As an increasing number of facilities take advantage of new technology to connect different departments and to enable greater efficiency, KVM technology is proving to be a valuable component of modernization projects.

Every control room depends on AV infrastructure — cabling, switches, user consoles, screens and monitors, keyboards, mice, and more — to enable the sharing, manipulation, and control of data and sources machines.

A complete solution for a linked lab and control room allows for flexible routing, switching and extension of signals between source PCs, physical servers, control interfaces, peripherals, and visualized server infrastructure. These capabilities give technicians in the lab and operators in the control room fast, convenient, customizable and secure access to the data and control functions essential to their work.

Tailor-made KVM for the Laboratory "Cockpit"

In the case of Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), which recently completed a new centralized laboratory and cockpit-style control room, KVM technology from Black Box plays a fundamental role in allowing facility designers and staff to realize several goals.

After discussing with LUMC administrators their vision for the installation and talking with technicians about how they wanted to work, Black Box engineers designed a KVM solution tailor-made for the LUMC lab and control room (or cockpit). Black Box specializes in just this type of design project, designing KVM solutions for more than 600 control rooms a year.

Within the new LUMC lab, the work of several diagnostic laboratories has been merged into one. Now, an array of analysis tools is located within a single laboratory with a KVM system connecting workstations to the source machines. Most workstations in the lab have access to multiple sources or analysis systems, and one workstation in the lab can access all systems, enabling an operator to perform a complete analysis process, from end to end, while working at the same station.

Monitoring the Complete Test Process

With the flexibility to work with several different analysis systems while remaining at a single workstation, technicians no longer need to move from workstation to workstation throughout their shift. This change has helped to increase the efficiency of staff members in delivering diagnostic data, and it has contributed to greater employee satisfaction, as well.

The KVM solution from Black Box gives staff in the control room the ability to monitor everything taking place in the lab. A workstation in the control room gives a single user there the ability to monitor, access, and control all analysis systems involved in the test process. Overview screens scan the analyzers every 5 or 10 seconds so that the operator can easily keep track of what’s going on in the lab.

The all-visual interface features a user-friendly touch panel that allows control room staff to look at different analyzers without worrying about the correct shortcut keys. Convenient access to all lab systems also allows a technician working in the control room during slower hours, such as night shifts with fewer staff, to undertake even a complex series of tests from beginning to end.

Working with Black Box to build a future-proof KVM infrastructure for its lab and control room, LUMC has established a foundation for continued growth and advancement using its choice of new techniques and technologies. Read more about the forward-looking facility in the original LABinsight.nl article.

Learn Additional Requirements in Our White Paper

Check out our new white paper, How to Future-Proof Connectivity for Tomorrow’s Control Room, to learn more about what you need for control room success going forward. This paper explains how to overcome the concerns and challenges of tomorrow’s control rooms, first by describing a complete solution built on a unified KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) connectivity and signal distribution system and then by explaining how all components in the full solution work together to address the requirements of modern control room applications.

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