Traditional access control systems
lack clarity and precision

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities often struggle to keep track of the hundreds of people passing through their buildings around the clock. Things can go wrong, even with an access card system, a strict visitor policy and strategically placed CCTV cameras.

There are several reasons for this. Firstly, keys and key cards are not personalised. If they get lost and fall into the wrong hands, anyone can use them to gain access. Secondly, care staff on short-term contracts sometimes forget to hand their keys or key cards back when their contracts end. These keys remain valid, so the only way to prevent such people gaining unauthorised access is to demand a physical handover — a time consuming process with no guarantee of success.  Finally, keys and key cards, once granted, are universally valid. Users can gain access all day every day as long as they have the key or card. This means for example, that a janitor working on a day shift can gain access to the hospital at night.

Even the most efficiently managed hospitals experience a degree of uncertainly around who has access to which building, which ward and which medicine cabinet at any given time. Consequently, medical supplies go missing, as do patients’ personal affects and of course, prescription drugs. There are losses on many levels, and in the absence of a clear picture of the hospital’s access rights, the culprits are hard to identify.

Sony’s over-the-air access management system gives hospitals full control

Do hospitals simply have to accept this situation? The development team at Sony didn’t think so. That’s why they came up with an IoT-based platform to address all the above weaknesses… and more besides. It’s called Criotive and, used in conjunction with electronic locks, it gives hospitals an easy way of limiting access to a particular person, place and period of time.

Criotive adds a whole new level of precision to the hospital’s access management system, while simplifying the hospital administrator’s job. To grant someone access rights, the administrator simply logs into the Criotive web interface and sends a virtual ’key’ to that person’s smartphone for touch transfer to a card or use it directly on a wearable device.

Keys and key cards no longer get lost or stolen because there are no physical keys. Neither do hospitals have to worry about ex-employees keeping old keys. Access rights can simply be cancelled via the web interface with a single click.  What’s more, there’s no longer any need for face-to-face meetings between the on-site administrator and the user since key provisioning all takes place remotely. So Criotive not only makes hospitals safer, but also more efficient.

Find out more about the Criotive service