Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Background
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) is a world-renowned teaching hospital located in Boston’s Longwood Medical Area, the medical and academic center of the city.
The hospital had wanted to create a state-of-the-art, 25-bed behavioral health unit to address acute psychiatric, neuropathic, and substance-use emergencies. To do so, MGH gutted part of an existing structure and built the new unit almost from scratch.
Challenge
As an emergency area, the new behavioral unit needed to be able to handle high-risk patients. Everything in each patient room had to be vandal- and tamper-resistant and anti-ligature, including the overhead lighting and any lighting keypads.
The patient rooms lacked windows, so patients received no sunlight while in their rooms and, as a result, none of natural light’s benefits to their circadian rhythms. MGH wanted their new unit to include lighting controls that would allow staff to control the lighting in each patient’s room from the nurse’s station or a keypad outside each patient room.
The hospital also wanted the rest of the unit’s lighting (in the corridors, nurse’s station, etc.) to operate separately from the patient room lighting system. This request considerably elevated the difficulty of this lighting project.
In addition to being vandal-resistant and anti-ligature, the keypads had to be compatible with the Crestron patient controls for light brightness and TV. And MGH wanted the staff to be able to override the patient’s control of the lights and TV.
The architectural firm NBBJ also wanted to create a connection between the windowless patient rooms and the outdoors by using tunable lighting for daylighting, that is mimicking sunlight throughout the day, making patients more comfortable, with less disruption to their circadian rhythms.
Photo by Ben Becker Creative Commons License
The project needed special permission to continue during the COVID lockdown. It became very difficult to get electrical and lighting technicians onto the site. So, Carlos Alonso-Niemeyer, a principal at Reflex Lighting spent a day in an MGH closet with his own laptop troubleshooting some issues that had popped up. And a team from Cooper Lighting Solution completed the startup and commissioning of the new lighting system.
Solution
Reflex Lighting, a top provider of lighting solutions in the Northeast, recommended Cooper Lighting Solutions to TCI Thompson Consultants, the electrical engineers for this MGH project. Reflex Lighting has worked with Cooper Lighting Solutions for many years and knew that Cooper Lighting Solutions is the only lighting company that has an interface that could work seamlessly with the Crestron equipment."
Cooper Lighting Solutions provided various lighting controls products from our WaveLinx Wired family as well as sensors and dimmers from our Greengate line.
The comprehensive WaveLinx Wired connected lighting system is known as a wired solution for everything from simple spaces to complex lighting control specifications – all using a two-wire local bus. It offers all the functions needed to meet the most complex lighting applications, including those of the new MGH behavioral health unit.
The Greengate line of sensors, dimmers, and control panels from Cooper Lighting Solutions is energy code-compliant to help save energy and reduce installation costs.
Results
The electrical and Cooper Lighting Solutions teams were able to create a lighting system that’s ahead of its time.
Patient Comfort The windowless patient rooms feature tunable light that’s programmed to change in light temperature every 15 minutes, providing patients with electric light that mimics natural sunlight, supports circadian rhythms, and makes patients feel more comfortable.
Patient Safety All the products used in patient rooms for this project are vandal-/tamper-resistant as well as anti-ligature, so they’re ideal for use in high-risk patient rooms.
Patient- and Staff-Control Patients feel more at ease when they can control the light and TV in their rooms. However, staff have the ability to override patient control when deemed necessary.
User-Friendly Intuitive keypads make it easy for patients and staff to control their environment.
High Functionality WaveLinx Wired makes it possible for staff to control the resident lighting from outside resident room, communicating with a control system vendor keypad.
Products Used
- Ethernet Gateway
- DALI Wallstations
- 0-10v Digital to Analog Converter Class 2
- DALI powerpack
- System-Integrator
- iLumin Plus Software
- Surface Mounting Electronic Time Clock
- LCD Color Touchscreen, Black
- TSE Touchscreen Interface
- Occupancy Sensors
- Decorator Dimmer
The project included controls and tunable lighting. Shown here is warm morning light.
Patients can control light brightness in their rooms; staff can override patients’ lighting control when necessary.
User-friendly keyboards outside every patient room simplify lighting control for staff.
The power behind the scenes: best-in-class lighting controls from Cooper Lighting Solutions.