Hospitals and healthcare facilities
Early warning for buildings where outage and evacuation are not options.
An electrical panel incident in a hospital has a different consequence from one in any other building: operating theatres, intensive care and imaging units cannot tolerate an outage, and evacuation is itself a risk to the patient. In these buildings prevention costs far less than response.
Contact
Why the calculation differs in a hospital
In most buildings the cost of a panel fire is measured in equipment and downtime. In a hospital the same event can mean critical units becoming unusable and an evacuation decision — and for a patient in intensive care, evacuation is itself a risk.
That asymmetry changes the framing. The question is not “how quickly does this monitoring system pay for itself”, but “what does it take to bring the probability of this event down to an acceptable level”.
Where monitoring goes
The critical points in hospital electrical infrastructure are well defined: main distribution boards, floor panels, theatre and intensive care supply panels, generator cabinets, UPS and battery rooms. ArcFire Sense is mounted inside these panels; AirQuality Sense monitors the carbon monoxide channel in generator cabinets and the hydrogen and TVOC channels in battery rooms.
Both probe types share the same enclosure, the same CAN-FD field bus and the same register model — fire early warning and environmental monitoring are built on one infrastructure.
What installation means operationally
Probes are installed without cutting power. In a hospital that means, in practice: no unit shutdown, no patient transfer and no planned outage is needed for installation. The facility carries on operating normally while the system learns each panel’s steady-state behaviour during commissioning.
Recommended product combination
- ARF-005ArcFire SenseA multi-channel gas, thermal and electrical signature probe for electrical panels.
- AQS-010AirQuality SenseA multi-channel air quality and gas measurement probe for industrial interiors.
- CTX-IQ-100IQ PanelThe edge controller that hosts the Cortex platform's embedded AI inference engine.
- CM-W100WiFi ModuleA wireless local area network (WLAN) communication module for the IQ Panel.
Frequently asked questions
Does installation disrupt hospital operations?
Probes are installed without cutting power and with no mechanical modification to the panel enclosure. The facility carries on operating normally while the system collects data during commissioning; no unit needs to be taken offline.
Does this replace our existing fire detection system?
No, it complements it. A fire detection system responds to particulate and heat once a fire has started; ArcFire Sense targets the outgassing and thermal signature stage before it begins. The two operate in different time windows and are expected to coexist.
Can air quality in patient and staff areas be monitored too?
Yes. AirQuality Sense measures temperature, humidity, pressure, TVOC, eCO₂, carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide, and shares the same field bus as ArcFire Sense. Carbon monoxide in generator cabinets and hydrogen in battery and UPS rooms are typical applications.
Will it integrate with our building management system?
Modbus TCP, Modbus RTU and MQTT/TLS are supported; it connects to an existing building management or SCADA system with no middleware layer.