Visitors and employees in healthcare facilities often wait for elevators only to see that a patient bed is occupying the elevator they’ve been waiting for.
Whether a visitor or employee, people would like to get to their destinations as soon as possible.
Meanwhile, a bedbound patient being brought to the operating room or perhaps to another ward needs something else too—a bit of privacy. It can be uncomfortable for such a patient if, on repeated floors, strangers end up staring inside the elevator and/or crowd around the bed in the little space there is left.
CEDES has developed a sensor solution that eliminates the frustration that can arise when a bed laden elevator stops on various floors, even though there is little or no place for additional passengers. The simple, yet effective, system comprises installing three TPS sensors in the ceiling of an elevator, with an evaluation unit mounted on its roof.
The triangulation sensors monitor the inside of the elevator car and emit two independent beams. This allows the sensors to distinguish between passengers and large objects such as beds—based on the differences in height. When a bed is detected, the sensors tell the elevator controls to send the elevator directly to the floor selected by the person accompanying the bed. This eliminates unnecessary stops in between and spares waiting passengers additional frustration.
The TPS bed detection system ensures increased privacy and comfort for bed-bound patients travelling between floors. And no key switch, transponder card, or destination selection control is necessary. This product, which reliably identifies the presence of a bed in an elevator, is being successfully operated in several major hospitals.
