The University of Greenwich Medical School recently completed the renovation of two buildings to create four Clinical Skills labs, three consultations rooms, three observation rooms and three ward simulation areas for teaching, examinations and simulation training for students at the state of the art medical school. A separate building also houses a mock-up flat, ambulance and seminar room. All recently benefitted from an upgrade to their AV systems to aid teaching, assessment and learning.

The services of specialist AV company Drama by Design were engaged by the University to carry out the detailed design, coordination, project management, testing and commissioning of all of the AV systems throughout the separate buildings. This includes both custom designed teaching AV systems and the Simulation Management system which incorporates a video capture/playback/de-brief system for monitoring student’s work.

All rooms are equipped with IP cameras, microphones and video capture devices. Cameras located above each bed bay and in each room allow simulations and different scenarios to be streamed live for debrief and reflection. Content is also saved to central servers for review and reuse on and off site.

Three hospital simulation wards are fully equipped to mimic real life environments and incorporate display screens above each bed, connected to the central AV system, to display vital signs or content broadcast from the nurses station, for teaching purposes. Overhead loudspeakers, linked to both the teaching AV system and the simulation system, in the wards allow the replay of supporting sound for AV content  or talk-back from the observation rooms. Loudspeakers at each bed bay provide replay of patient voices for simulations. Patient simulator manikins can also be connected to the system to allow vital signs to be recorded, alongside video recordings.

Five clinical teaching spaces also incorporate a full teaching AV solution with lectern, projector screen and height adjustable repeater/touch screens are also also equipped with cameras and microphones for recording. Each room can be used as a single teaching space or as four separate breakout zones centred around each touch screen.

The flexibility of the teaching AV system and the simulation management system allows any audio/video source to be routed to any display whilst recording, if required, each lesson.

The AV project for the University of Greenwich Medical School ran through most of 2020 commencing in January and completing in December, although the system design planning started much earlier for Drama by Design, in September 2019.

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