The healthcare industry poses a variety of interesting challenges that effective and efficient building control systems can help to solve.

For example, hospitals, clinics and medical manufacturers alike may have highly temperature-sensitive environments requiring active monitoring and management. Aging facilities may require new control systems to be retrofitted and integrated with existing systems to manage patient comfort. And new facilities and expansions may also require integration with existing systems to optimize energy use across an extensive campus.

KMC has a storied history of helping with all of these situations with products like KMC Conquest, SimplyVAV, and KMC Total Control.

But when strict product-quality standards, environmental safety, “green” initiatives, complex health compliance requirements, and additional system integrations are added into the equation, a flexible, customizable, sophisticated building control system becomes a critical tool for saving time and energy costs. That’s where IoT in healthcare environments becomes an intriguing option.

How does the Internet of Things (IoT) change healthcare building management?

IoT, or the Internet of Things, is all about leveraging the increasing number of “smart” technologies to bring various data points together in a comprehensible, actionable way. Implementing IoT in healthcare building management systems can offer a flexible and scalable solution to a number of pain points, as virtually any device that measures or controls a building or environmental factor can be brought into the IoT loop to be proactively monitored and managed: temperatures, humidity, air quality, energy use, security and more.

In a sense, building controls are the low-hanging fruit of IoT in healthcare environments. While patient care IoT is still developing, building controls are already in place, many of which may already capture the data needed to integrate an IoT solution. Technology like KMC Commander can aid IoT implementation across a host of commercial-grade building systems, sensors, and meters—mission-critical systems in every healthcare facility. KMC Commander assimilates and presents the data needed to make informed decisions and presents them in an easy-to-read interface on any computer or smart device. It can also automate decisions to free up human resources. And the best part is, this IoT solution is scalable; start by solving just one pain point like humidity or temperature control, then build out a full building controls IoT strategy as time and budget allows.