Scott Dunn (00:05):
From AI and deep learning to cybersecurity and IoT, keeping up with technology can be challenging.
James Marcella (00:14):
Our podcast is not just about helping you keep up. We're inviting you to the precipice of what we now know is possible.
Scott Dunn (00:21):
Join us as we interview industry luminaries and trailblazers to hear how they're leveraging technology, navigating the pitfalls and predicting the future.
James Marcella (00:32):
Together, we'll explore today's most timely topics, combining human imagination and intelligent technologies to discover new solutions.
Scott Dunn (00:43):
I am happy to introduce my co-host, Mr. James Marcella, security expert and industry association leader.
James Marcella (00:51):
And it's a pleasure to introduce Scott Dunn, technology innovator and award-winning speaker.
Scott Dunn (00:59):
And this is Connect, a bimonthly podcast from Axis Communications.
James Marcella (01:10):
On today's episode, I'll be speaking to Gloria Graham about the intersection of health and safety. Welcome to the show, Gloria. It's a pleasure to have you here today.
Gloria Graham (01:25):
Thank you. It's a pleasure to join you.
James Marcella (01:27):
Why don't you take a minute and introduce yourself to our listeners?
Gloria Graham (01:32):
Sure. I'm Gloria Graham and I am currently the system director for emergency management and public safety and also the PBX or switchboard operations at Lee Health System in Southwest Florida. We are sort of a unique health system in that we are publicly held, so one of a way a handful of publicly health systems throughout the country. And so our border actually elected officials and we are a small unit of government by Florida statute, so that's a pretty unique and interesting organization to be part of. Prior to joining Lee Health in July of 2020, I spent the previous 25 years working in campus policing at a number of different institutions of higher education throughout the country.
(02:23):
At a few of those, I was responsible for our police footprint within those health systems. For instance, at the University of Southern Cal and the University of Chicago and Duke University, and then the University of Virginia. When I decided that I was ready to transition out of policing, I took some time and talked to a number of different colleagues that I had worked with throughout the country and really was very thoughtful about what next. And I landed at wanting to join a healthcare entity and transfer into the safety and security or public safety or whatever you want to call it for a health system. And so then like I said, I joined Lee Health in 2020 right after the pandemic started.
James Marcella (03:10):
So as the director of emergency management and public safety, what are your main responsibilities? And from a technology perspective, what technologies are instrumental with your role?
Gloria Graham (03:19):
Wow, we have a lot. We do.
James Marcella (03:22):
Where to start, right?
Gloria Graham (03:24):
Precisely. So one of the areas we do have public safety technology. I have a director on my team that cares for all of our security and public safety technology throughout the system. So everything from literally thousands of cameras to duress alarms to infant abduction prevention technology to wearable duress alarms that are clinicians wear to minimize the opportunity for workplace violence incidents or to quickly get public safety to them to help them if that's happening. There's just so much. And also obviously, how do we integrate all of that stuff too. I think here we use a lot more analytics than I did previously. With our cameras especially, we rely heavily on the analytic piece of it. Everything from aggression detection analytics, so having a heads-up if somebody is perhaps raising voices in a particular area, those sorts of things. But there's a lot of stuff and it's pretty interesting.
James Marcella (04:29):
So in a healthcare setting, you mentioned from a technology standpoint, aggression detection and audio is one example. I think you also mentioned wearable technology for, I would assume these are frontline practitioners that-
Gloria Graham (04:42):
Yes.
James Marcella (04:43):
... would be wearing these. Okay. What are some other ways technology is used in a workplace violence from a prevention perspective, and then obviously from a reactive perspective when something actually happens.
Gloria Graham (04:55):
From a technology standpoint, from the prevention side, I mentioned earlier our cameras and our analytics, those are really important. We also use license plate recognition at our entrances to our emergency departments and some of that we use them in a proactive way, so we've got people that are already loaded into that system so that we can immediately know if they are presenting. And then obviously we use it from an evidentiary purposes as well so that we can go back and look and see who or what was in a space, which car, and that kind of thing.
(05:28):
Our emergency departments tend to be where we see the most volatility. I'll give you a really good example. In September of 2021, a person entered our emergency room at one of our hospitals, and during triage it was discovered that he had some suicidal ideation. He was taken back to receive treatment, and while he was given his gown to change into, he disclosed to the person that was assisting him, the clinician that was assisting him, that he was armed with a handgun and he ended up barricading himself in a bathroom and sadly enough, ended up taking his own life.
James Marcella (06:09):
It's horrible.
Gloria Graham (06:09):
My goodness. You talk about a healing environment where all of the nurses, the doctors, the ED techs, everyone who works in that space, the public safety officers, our primary goal, when people present in our space, is to get them the help and the treatment they need to heal, whatever that is. And we did immediate after action reviews and hot washes of that incident. And the emotion in the room was just, you could feel it. From that experience, we realized we needed to do whatever we could to minimize or eliminate the opportunity for that to occur again. So we did some immediate procedural changes that of course minimize the opportunity for that to occur.
(06:55):
We knew that we needed to do something, but we wanted to be thoughtful and we wanted to select a solution that we thought was going to have the good balance between achieving what we needed it to achieve, which was minimize the opportunity for violence by weapons, but also we know that people who come into our health system have trouble with their mobility. Some people are in wheelchairs and those sorts of things. We did a lot of investigating and decided on the Evolv product because we feel that it is the best way to make our patients not be inconvenienced too much, to be sensitive to their varying needs, and also to achieve our goal, which is to minimize the opportunity for weapons to be in our system.
James Marcella (07:40):
That's quite a story, and I've had conversations about workplace violence and healthcare and just the proliferation of that violence over the years. From a statistics perspective, it's one of the highest places, correct, for workplace violence, healthcare?
Gloria Graham (07:52):
Absolutely. Yes. And what we also know is that the vast majority of workplace violence in healthcare settings goes unreported. And so not only is it statistically the highest, there is so much of it that's unreported. So that's where we are doing a lot of work right now at Lee Health is identifying easy ways to report so that we can truly get a good grasp on what's going on.
James Marcella (08:15):
Right. Correct. So you've talked about a lot of different technologies, interesting technologies as well as a diverse set of tools that you use. Let's talk about the integration of all that. How do you manage all these different technologies? Where does this all come together for you to gain that situational awareness?
Gloria Graham (08:33):
Sure. We have a central security operations center or what many will refer to as a CSOC, and that's what we call ours as well. It's essentially like, my very first job in the police department was a dispatcher. I was a police dispatcher, and our CSOC is very much like a police dispatch center or a sheriff's department dispatch center. Our CSOC is where everything that is public safety technology related goes, and we've got at least two and oftentimes three dispatchers on duty, at any given time, along with a supervisor because they're managing the calls for service and the public safety operations for five hospitals and all of our 90 plus non-acute locations, and they're dispatching the public safety resources to those locations.
James Marcella (09:24):
Just dawned on me, and I probably should have known this, I mean this is a sprawling network of, this isn't one location, this is a lot of different locations, all coming back into CSOC is that campus security operations center?
Gloria Graham (09:40):
No, it's central.
James Marcella (09:42):
Central, okay, perfect. So that's all these different technologies plus all these different geographic locations all coming back into one central security operations center.
Gloria Graham (09:53):
Correct. Yes.
James Marcella (09:54):
And you're running that 365 days a year, 24/7, I assume?
Gloria Graham (09:58):
That's right, yes.
James Marcella (10:00):
Wow.
Gloria Graham (10:01):
So when you call public safety, you may be at a hospital that's in Cape Coral. When you call public safety, there's actually a dispatcher that's all the way down in South Fort Myers that's answering your call and then dispatching the appropriate public safety resources at that campus.
James Marcella (10:19):
Wow. How common is that in the healthcare setting, what you just described?
Gloria Graham (10:24):
It's becoming more common, especially for your multi-hospital health systems. So you're larger health systems, you're definitely going to see these central security operations centers in play.
James Marcella (10:34):
So you brought significant innovation, it sounds like. Any other examples of innovative practices that you're doing down at Lee Health?
Gloria Graham (10:41):
There's a couple of things when you think about people's personal safety. People's perception of safety and their psychological safety is something you cannot ignore, and you have to meet them exactly where they're at with that. You have to, so non-negotiable. They don't want to hear your fancy statistics and all of that stuff if they don't feel safe. From the feedback we've received, the wearable devices have helped to bolster that psychological safety for especially our emergency department nurses. The other thing that I think we are certainly leading the way on, and this is really something that I brought with me from working in higher ed for so many years, we replaced our emergency notification system last year. So our system that allows us to quickly text message or email or even do desktop alerts to our community when there's any kind of an emergency message that needs to go out.
(11:33):
One of the things that I opted for, and I wanted to make sure that the solution we selected had is a mobile safety app. And so we have a mobile safety app. It's called Guardian, and it is Lee Health specific. And again, in our CSOC, you'll see there's one screen that hangs up on the wall that's dedicated to our mobile safety app because anybody who has that mobile safety app and it's Lee Health staff specific, they can text message, call directly to our public safety office through that mobile safety app, and they have the ability to remain anonymous if they want. We don't always know who's contacting us. They can send us tips. We have, as you can imagine in a healthcare system, you've got people walking to their cars all different times of night.
(12:19):
And so we have the ability, it's called a safe walk, and they can activate the safe walk, let us know that they're leaving and walking to their car. And not only can we virtually walk with them, but in many instances we also have cameras that are along that pathway that they're going to, and we can watch them and do a virtual escort actually with eyes on when they're walking to their cars and at one particular hospital they use that and we've gotten good feedback on that.
James Marcella (12:46):
A lot of benefits with all of this integration. What are some of the challenges you faced, whether that was implementation or are there any ongoing challenges that technology brings to the table in a good and bad way, maybe?
Gloria Graham (12:58):
I think for us, and we talk openly on the team that I have the pleasure of caring for, we talk openly on not getting distracted. There's so many opportunities and so many things out there. And one of the things we've been heavily focused on these last two years is making sure our foundation is solid. And when I say that, I mean making sure our systems are healthy, making sure that we have the people in place either contractually or in some instances, we've actually brought in our systems' analyst duties and much of our maintenance duties, we've brought those in-house. We've actually found value and really big ROI on hiring our own team members to help maintain our systems. We have focused really heavily on making sure that we have a solid foundation and then let's be strategic about how we build out. We also are very conscientious, and I talk openly with our team about this, in making sure that we are involving our partners and information systems because when we do things, it impacts a network and that network is literally keeping people alive.
James Marcella (14:14):
Great point.
Gloria Graham (14:15):
And we have to be mindful of that, and so we make sure that we're in lockstep with them and that we're not doing things that are going to negatively impact the network.
James Marcella (14:28):
We haven't mentioned it, but we really have to bring up cyber security as something that is obviously important on the IT perspective, but since probably the vast majority of the technology you're leveraging for situational awareness for getting the security and safety job done throughout the day resides on the network, where are you at from a cybersecurity perspective and how much has that become a part of your life?
Gloria Graham (14:58):
One of the advantages I had was at a couple of my last police departments, security technology was in my portfolio. So I had a director of security technology. He was really good at bringing me along and helping me to understand the concerns and the technology and how everything integrated and those sorts of things. Because of that, I didn't come in completely blind to the security technology arena. And so when I got here, I realized that we had given up much of our system administration, really. I mean, we were allowing a third party integrator to administer our system and they had full access to our network and different things, and it just wasn't a model I was familiar with. I couldn't imagine that our IS team had signed off on it, but I thought, "Well, maybe they did," but I wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page with exactly what was going on.
(15:54):
When I really helped them to see the picture for what it was, and they realized how much access this integrator had been given. We all agreed that we needed to make changes, but you can't make those changes overnight. It took us about a year. It was costly. We had to replace a lot of servers and different things because many of the workstations that were being utilized to manage our technology integration were not even behind our firewall. So there were a lot of gaps and a lot of openness. We, over the last year, in fact, we just finished that project and we all feel much better.
James Marcella (16:35):
Do you have any specific requirements when you're looking at products and technology that need to be fulfilled before you add them to your network now?
Gloria Graham (16:44):
We do. And also requirements just for our own selves. So making sure we're changing the default passwords on every single little small device versus having thousands of them out there with the default password. We have both internal and external expectations. And again, that's something that we now work very closely and hand in hand with our IS partners on. And one of the other things that when we had a large project, we didn't always engage IS at the appropriate level and ask for true project management. Instead, we would do much of that work, get things installed and then say, "Can you make these jacks live? Or can you give us the details we need?" And now that's not the way we do business.
James Marcella (17:28):
Got it. And then ongoing management of these thousands of devices, you mentioned cameras alone, thousands of cameras, right? What's the plan around that? How do you handle lifecycle management of these products?
Gloria Graham (17:40):
That's something that we talk about and we have been talking about even more so over the last probably year and a half. We did just set up a project with our third party integrator to do maintenance twice a year on our cameras because sometimes it's just as important just to clean your cameras as it is to replace them. So we are doing that work. And then I mentioned that we do have a director over our public safety technology. He has an analyst that works with him. He has a low voltage check that works with him now. Those are all new positions that we added, and again, based on presenting what we believed would be an ROI, and it has turned out to be one in being able to have access to those services immediately when we need them. I'll give you a great real time example.
(18:29):
This year when Hurricane Ian hit, there were a lot of remarkable moments and anybody who's in our health system is fragile. They wouldn't be in the hospital if they didn't need us and they weren't having some sort of a challenge. But you think about babies and pediatric patients and just human nature, we automatically think of how vulnerable they are and how dependent they are on people taking care of them. And so when you think about the NICU patients especially, it's not just them, it's their parents too, because their parents are having... You talk about the level of trust you've got to have in an entity when they come to you and say, "We've got to evacuate and we're going to move your babies or baby to another hospital, and here's how we're going to help you get there as well." There were moments in the command center, especially when those kinds of operations were going on.
(19:23):
When I tell you, you could hear a pin drop, and most of the time you couldn't hear a pin drop in the command center because it's phones ringing and people moving, and, "I need this and I need that." But when those really big operations, those very serious critical operations were going on, you could hear a pin drop in there, and much of the time we're watching on our cameras. Because I'm all the way down by Bonita Springs, so we're watching the helipad and we're watching those helicopters take off, and we're like, "Okay, they're in the air. All right." And it gives me goosebumps right now just to talk about it because I can still just remember those feelings. It's really special, remarkable work that so many professionals had a hand in.
James Marcella (20:05):
And so your team in the security and safety side of things must have coordinated with outside resources to get all of this done. And you managed that all through a hurricane.
Gloria Graham (20:18):
The pediatric hospitals in Florida specifically have a really solid that I didn't know existed, and you wouldn't until a situation like this happens. But they have a predefined agreement in place that when something like this is to happen, they're just such a tight network that as soon as someone makes the call, that everyone just goes, and they literally, that's what happened. And so that's why our pediatric hospital was able to be evacuated so quickly and get those patients to places that they were going to be safer.
James Marcella (20:50):
This idea of having MOUs with other hospitals in the area and other organizations to respond to whatever incident occurs. I saw that you're trained in incident command.
Gloria Graham (21:02):
Yes.
James Marcella (21:02):
So proper planning up front really is what makes these stories good stories after the fact. What about COVID? We're not really a hundred percent out of COVID yet, but at least we're learning to live with it, or I guess is probably the best way to put it right now. But back in the early days, you took this job and you moved your family down to Florida at the beginning of COVID. What were some of the challenges that you had to face and Lee Health had to face throughout the last few years?
Gloria Graham (21:30):
I think there have certainly been challenges, especially surges because when COVID happens, when a surge would happen, not only would we have more patients, and so then the need and the burden is on the clinicians to take care of them is significantly increased. In addition to that, you have to minimize or eliminate visitors. And what we don't always think about with visitors is that many of those visitors are helping brush teeth, helping feed their loved ones, helping getting them to the bathrooms. Visitors are a very positive element within a hospital, but for their safety and the safety of our patients, we had to eliminate them. So not only are there more, as I mentioned, there's more increased obligation on our clinicians, and then this other resource that's kind of an informal resource also is eliminated. And so people are worried about, "What am I taking home to my own family?"
(22:28):
And I can tell you on social media, people would often see videos where you've seen nurses changing their clothes out in the parking lot and stuff, that really happens. They're taking those clothes off, putting them in their trunk and putting fresh clothes and shoes on so that they can go home and feel comfortable getting back into their houses. There were lots of things, lots of challenges, but I do think that there have been so many wonderful things, specifically in the realm of technology that have happened as a result of COVID. I think that it catapulted our acceptance and our ability and our willingness to do virtual medicine, which has been amazing. We are even exploring right now an expansion of that. One of the things that is facing many health systems throughout the country right now are an increase in mental health and behavioral health patients and the challenges associated with getting them the right services they need in a timely fashion.
(23:30):
And so hospitals become spaces where those patients are able to receive at least some treatment while they're waiting for placement in a place that they may need to go. And so while they're there, they need to have one-to-one or at least constant observation. In a health system it's, "Do you hire 50 more FTEs or do you find a way to be able to virtually interact with these patients and let them stay in their room and have some privacy and some peace and maintain some dignity?" So lots of good things I think have come from COVID as well.
James Marcella (24:01):
Hopefully we learned a little bit out of this one and learning. I'm going to jump back. You had mentioned earlier about the perception of safety, one's perception of security. I couldn't agree with you more. There's the reality of security and then there's one's perception of that reality. You talked about some technologies. You talked about Evolv for weapon screening. Are there any other technologies that you'd like to comment on specifically about creating an environment where people feel safe, not just staff and folks working there, but for patients coming into these different facilities?
Gloria Graham (24:37):
Right now, we are in a space with our own health system here where we're just being really financially responsible. And when you have a hurricane that hits you and hits your area as hard as it did us, the aftermath of that is you need to be fiscally responsible. And so we've been looking at all of the technology we have. We've been looking at all of our practices and the way that we do things just to make sure that they're all need-to-haves, not like-to-haves, right?
James Marcella (25:03):
Sure.
Gloria Graham (25:05):
Part of that has really been looking at things like visitor management systems that are enterprise-wide. These systems go throughout our health systems. You can imagine they're costly. And so is that something that we need to do? When I've been assessing all of the different things that we are doing, there are certain things that this system does that I can prove to you, and here are those numbers and here are those statistics, and here's what we know happened with these systems.
(25:31):
There are also some things that I can't measure for you, but I can tell you that if we didn't have them, here would be some of the negative impacts that we would inevitably feel and our staff would feel. And as a result, what does it mean when I don't feel safe in a space? Basic needs have to be provided, and safety is a basic need, and they need to feel safe. I know just from my own personal experiences and having lived in a lot of different environments in a lot of different size cities, that our perceptions are a reality as it relates to safety.
James Marcella (26:06):
From a technology perspective, what would be some advice that you give to those in your industry and maybe some other industries when it comes to, again, you have a lot of experience with deploying lots of different technology and systems. What's some advice you could give to people out there?
Gloria Graham (26:23):
When I lived in LA, we had active monitoring. We had an entire monitoring center with active monitoring. We had to create safe passages for people to walk just so they wouldn't get robbed. So you've got analytics where if someone stops for too long in that alley, you're getting a police response to that location. And that's not necessary where I am, but I still need to be responsive to people's safety and securities concerns here because that is their baseline. And if they don't feel safe and secure, then we have to figure out how to help that not be the case. So I think my best advice is to really get to know what the concerns are and meet your audience where they are. You have to do that. You have to meet them where they are. That way you can avoid either over securing.
(27:09):
So building this program that's really turns out to make people wonder, "Well, what is going on that they've got to have this here?" Or under delivering and brushing off their concerns. So meeting them where they are and listening and understanding, and of course, using all of your data points and then figuring out what is it that we need to tackle and what are our options for doing that? And then one of the things that I pride myself in doing is engaging the stakeholders that are going to be impacted by whatever it is we're doing and letting them have a seat at the table and letting us talk through, "Here are the things we're looking at," and there's more than one way to do most things.
James Marcella (27:49):
That's great advice.
Gloria Graham (27:50):
Let's talk through this and see what's going to be most impactful.
James Marcella (27:54):
Getting stakeholders to the table and giving them a voice clearly helps with the acceptance and adoption of sometimes newer technology that they haven't been using. So I like that. I think it's critical. Any examples of where you've done that? You've brought in stakeholders who may be impacted by technology and maybe had a negative experience around that? Where there you got pushback or did that ever stop you from implementing something that you wanted to?
Gloria Graham (28:21):
No, I'm pretty diplomatic. And I also feel like I'm not one who's going to force a particular pet project of my own on folks. I feel like I'm pretty practical. I work for the system. And so my job is to do what's best for the system, and that means everybody who's part of that. That's the perspective I use and I come to the table with whenever we are exploring some sort of new technology that's meant to impact safety and security.
James Marcella (28:49):
So Gloria, I'm going to ask you to put on or look into your crystal ball or be forward-thinking here and really take a stab at where do you see technology going in the healthcare space from a security and safety perspective, and how do you think that'll impact the business?
Gloria Graham (29:05):
I think there's great opportunity for technology. I'll start in the workforce arena. I think that we all are feeling the squeeze of a smaller workforce availability. Especially in healthcare, you think about one of our larger populations, the baby boomer generation, if you will, are at that time in life where many are engaging in some sort of healthcare services. And so us, like everyone, we are looking at how can we not compromise our service delivery, but also be realistic in our expectations of our workforce. And so some of the things that I've been exploring lately is really we've been digging down and looking at what are the things that our team members are spending time on? What are they spending the most time on, and how might we be able to accomplish those things in another way?
(30:00):
I've also had lots of conversations with colleagues in the industry and looking at this kind of stuff because I do think that there is opportunity for us to provide virtual services in some ways, as long as people are able still to communicate and to feel like they're being seen and heard and that they know they're being seen and heard.
(30:21):
So looking at some of that technology, I mentioned earlier that the virtual sitter technology, some of our patients who are in the midst of a mental health crisis, the last thing they want is a security officer in a uniform sitting in their room. They're already not in the best space or they wouldn't be needing help. And so how do we make sure that they're safe in our space, and how do we make sure that what we do to make them feel safe and make them safe, doesn't incite them or irritate them or cause them additional anxiety or fear? I think there's a huge opportunity for technology to support us in that arena and in turn, to support a whole population of our service population and help them in a time when they're in pretty significant need. So looking at that. Those are two of the areas that are on my mind most frequently are those two buckets, if you will.
James Marcella (31:18):
So regarding future technology, every industry, we just hear AI being thrown around and mentioned in so many different cases. Where do you see artificial intelligence in the healthcare system primarily, obviously through the lens of a security practitioner?
Gloria Graham (31:33):
I have been very intrigued not only by artificial intelligence, but augmented intelligence lately.
James Marcella (31:40):
What's the difference?
Gloria Graham (31:41):
Augmented intelligence, from my understanding at least, is the ability to augment what's really there. My sister was just telling me about a colleague of hers who's doing this work and they're using it when they go and they're surveying land, for instance, they're putting on an AI, an augmented intelligence device, and they're able to actually see the survey lines while they're looking at the space and looking in real time. And I'm going to tell you, this is a far out, this is something I have not researched, but this is a conversation my sister and I had the other day. And the reality is, is that more and more of our healthcare entities are arming their staff and are equipping them with firearms and expecting them to be that first line of defense in that first responder from a safety and security and violence prevention perspective. And so having managed and overseeing police departments for a number of years, I know the risk that is associated there.
(32:35):
And I also have managed officer-involved shootings with my own team members. I think about one of the things that happens is that, and this happens with every incident, is that when there's video camera footage afterwards, we're able to slow that video camera footage down frame by frame by frame and dissect it. And in many times, Monday morning quarterback it, right? But the human that was on that scene isn't afforded that. They're not able to do that. And I think about policing and how, yes, some technology has been embraced over the years and we've gotten better, but policing by and large has always been a very traditional profession and married to their tradition and different things. I think about things like augmented reality that what if there were a way for a police officer to have a device that when they look at something and someone turns quickly, they can determine it's a pack of cigarettes versus a gun.
(33:28):
It's a cell phone versus a gun. And that officer can immediately make a different decision. I think that there is the limitless opportunity as it relates to both artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence. Artificial intelligence is one of the things that sold me the most on the Evolv product, because that's what it does. It's able to tell you, you don't have to divest every single thing that has a sliver of metal in it, because that system is able to, through artificial intelligence and through repetition, it's able to determine a cell phone versus a weapon and those sorts of things. So I think that there's significant opportunity out there for us.
James Marcella (34:12):
What you described there is sort of the conundrum of video surveillance, is how do we actually monitor and get value out of these thousands of devices out there. And a lot of times, leveraging analytics to notify us of an event is one thing, but it still requires human judgment. We're not at the point where AI can actually take over a hundred percent. We still need a human to look at something and say, "Okay, no, that's all right."
Gloria Graham (34:37):
Again, I think that the opportunities are endless there. We just had our briefing call this morning. That's where everybody at every campus, the public safety leadership at each of those campuses tells us what's going on. We had a number of catalytic converter thefts at a parking lot in the last week. And so you think about artificial intelligence, and it's at this lot, that's a lot we used to park fleet vehicles. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. And so they're there installing, we already had a project, we identified this as a problem location last year. So it's part of our new fiscal year projects is to install cameras out there, and they're there installing them. So the conversation becomes, "Okay, cameras are great, but we have over 2,500 of them, and we know that we're not going to watch them all at one time. So how do we utilize artificial intelligence and analytics to help us recognize out of these 2,500 cameras, this is the one I need to be watching right now."
(35:33):
And that's the goal, because we can't expect our three dispatchers to be answering calls for service and picking out one particular camera out of the thousands or one door that's propped open out of the hundreds, and that sort of thing. Those analytics and that artificial intelligence that's created by them helps out immensely.
James Marcella (35:53):
Well, Gloria, thank you so much for joining us today. Really fortunate to have you on and I learned a lot.
Gloria Graham (36:00):
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you, and I think talking out loud and talking through things, I learned something every single time, and I have been actually keeping a little bit of a list here on things that I actually need to follow up just because of our conversation. So thank you so much.
James Marcella (36:15):
It was great to have you on. Thank you so much.
Scott Dunn (36:22):
Thanks for listening to the Connect podcast.
James Marcella (36:25):
The Connect podcast is produced in collaboration with Gusto, a Matter company.
From AI and deep learning to cybersecurity and IoT, keeping up with technology can be challenging.
James Marcella (00:14):
Our podcast is not just about helping you keep up. We're inviting you to the precipice of what we now know is possible.
Scott Dunn (00:21):
Join us as we interview industry luminaries and trailblazers to hear how they're leveraging technology, navigating the pitfalls and predicting the future.
James Marcella (00:32):
Together, we'll explore today's most timely topics, combining human imagination and intelligent technologies to discover new solutions.
Scott Dunn (00:43):
I am happy to introduce my co-host, Mr. James Marcella, security expert and industry association leader.
James Marcella (00:51):
And it's a pleasure to introduce Scott Dunn, technology innovator and award-winning speaker.
Scott Dunn (00:59):
And this is Connect, a bimonthly podcast from Axis Communications.
James Marcella (01:10):
On today's episode, I'll be speaking to Gloria Graham about the intersection of health and safety. Welcome to the show, Gloria. It's a pleasure to have you here today.
Gloria Graham (01:25):
Thank you. It's a pleasure to join you.
James Marcella (01:27):
Why don't you take a minute and introduce yourself to our listeners?
Gloria Graham (01:32):
Sure. I'm Gloria Graham and I am currently the system director for emergency management and public safety and also the PBX or switchboard operations at Lee Health System in Southwest Florida. We are sort of a unique health system in that we are publicly held, so one of a way a handful of publicly health systems throughout the country. And so our border actually elected officials and we are a small unit of government by Florida statute, so that's a pretty unique and interesting organization to be part of. Prior to joining Lee Health in July of 2020, I spent the previous 25 years working in campus policing at a number of different institutions of higher education throughout the country.
(02:23):
At a few of those, I was responsible for our police footprint within those health systems. For instance, at the University of Southern Cal and the University of Chicago and Duke University, and then the University of Virginia. When I decided that I was ready to transition out of policing, I took some time and talked to a number of different colleagues that I had worked with throughout the country and really was very thoughtful about what next. And I landed at wanting to join a healthcare entity and transfer into the safety and security or public safety or whatever you want to call it for a health system. And so then like I said, I joined Lee Health in 2020 right after the pandemic started.
James Marcella (03:10):
So as the director of emergency management and public safety, what are your main responsibilities? And from a technology perspective, what technologies are instrumental with your role?
Gloria Graham (03:19):
Wow, we have a lot. We do.
James Marcella (03:22):
Where to start, right?
Gloria Graham (03:24):
Precisely. So one of the areas we do have public safety technology. I have a director on my team that cares for all of our security and public safety technology throughout the system. So everything from literally thousands of cameras to duress alarms to infant abduction prevention technology to wearable duress alarms that are clinicians wear to minimize the opportunity for workplace violence incidents or to quickly get public safety to them to help them if that's happening. There's just so much. And also obviously, how do we integrate all of that stuff too. I think here we use a lot more analytics than I did previously. With our cameras especially, we rely heavily on the analytic piece of it. Everything from aggression detection analytics, so having a heads-up if somebody is perhaps raising voices in a particular area, those sorts of things. But there's a lot of stuff and it's pretty interesting.
James Marcella (04:29):
So in a healthcare setting, you mentioned from a technology standpoint, aggression detection and audio is one example. I think you also mentioned wearable technology for, I would assume these are frontline practitioners that-
Gloria Graham (04:42):
Yes.
James Marcella (04:43):
... would be wearing these. Okay. What are some other ways technology is used in a workplace violence from a prevention perspective, and then obviously from a reactive perspective when something actually happens.
Gloria Graham (04:55):
From a technology standpoint, from the prevention side, I mentioned earlier our cameras and our analytics, those are really important. We also use license plate recognition at our entrances to our emergency departments and some of that we use them in a proactive way, so we've got people that are already loaded into that system so that we can immediately know if they are presenting. And then obviously we use it from an evidentiary purposes as well so that we can go back and look and see who or what was in a space, which car, and that kind of thing.
(05:28):
Our emergency departments tend to be where we see the most volatility. I'll give you a really good example. In September of 2021, a person entered our emergency room at one of our hospitals, and during triage it was discovered that he had some suicidal ideation. He was taken back to receive treatment, and while he was given his gown to change into, he disclosed to the person that was assisting him, the clinician that was assisting him, that he was armed with a handgun and he ended up barricading himself in a bathroom and sadly enough, ended up taking his own life.
James Marcella (06:09):
It's horrible.
Gloria Graham (06:09):
My goodness. You talk about a healing environment where all of the nurses, the doctors, the ED techs, everyone who works in that space, the public safety officers, our primary goal, when people present in our space, is to get them the help and the treatment they need to heal, whatever that is. And we did immediate after action reviews and hot washes of that incident. And the emotion in the room was just, you could feel it. From that experience, we realized we needed to do whatever we could to minimize or eliminate the opportunity for that to occur again. So we did some immediate procedural changes that of course minimize the opportunity for that to occur.
(06:55):
We knew that we needed to do something, but we wanted to be thoughtful and we wanted to select a solution that we thought was going to have the good balance between achieving what we needed it to achieve, which was minimize the opportunity for violence by weapons, but also we know that people who come into our health system have trouble with their mobility. Some people are in wheelchairs and those sorts of things. We did a lot of investigating and decided on the Evolv product because we feel that it is the best way to make our patients not be inconvenienced too much, to be sensitive to their varying needs, and also to achieve our goal, which is to minimize the opportunity for weapons to be in our system.
James Marcella (07:40):
That's quite a story, and I've had conversations about workplace violence and healthcare and just the proliferation of that violence over the years. From a statistics perspective, it's one of the highest places, correct, for workplace violence, healthcare?
Gloria Graham (07:52):
Absolutely. Yes. And what we also know is that the vast majority of workplace violence in healthcare settings goes unreported. And so not only is it statistically the highest, there is so much of it that's unreported. So that's where we are doing a lot of work right now at Lee Health is identifying easy ways to report so that we can truly get a good grasp on what's going on.
James Marcella (08:15):
Right. Correct. So you've talked about a lot of different technologies, interesting technologies as well as a diverse set of tools that you use. Let's talk about the integration of all that. How do you manage all these different technologies? Where does this all come together for you to gain that situational awareness?
Gloria Graham (08:33):
Sure. We have a central security operations center or what many will refer to as a CSOC, and that's what we call ours as well. It's essentially like, my very first job in the police department was a dispatcher. I was a police dispatcher, and our CSOC is very much like a police dispatch center or a sheriff's department dispatch center. Our CSOC is where everything that is public safety technology related goes, and we've got at least two and oftentimes three dispatchers on duty, at any given time, along with a supervisor because they're managing the calls for service and the public safety operations for five hospitals and all of our 90 plus non-acute locations, and they're dispatching the public safety resources to those locations.
James Marcella (09:24):
Just dawned on me, and I probably should have known this, I mean this is a sprawling network of, this isn't one location, this is a lot of different locations, all coming back into CSOC is that campus security operations center?
Gloria Graham (09:40):
No, it's central.
James Marcella (09:42):
Central, okay, perfect. So that's all these different technologies plus all these different geographic locations all coming back into one central security operations center.
Gloria Graham (09:53):
Correct. Yes.
James Marcella (09:54):
And you're running that 365 days a year, 24/7, I assume?
Gloria Graham (09:58):
That's right, yes.
James Marcella (10:00):
Wow.
Gloria Graham (10:01):
So when you call public safety, you may be at a hospital that's in Cape Coral. When you call public safety, there's actually a dispatcher that's all the way down in South Fort Myers that's answering your call and then dispatching the appropriate public safety resources at that campus.
James Marcella (10:19):
Wow. How common is that in the healthcare setting, what you just described?
Gloria Graham (10:24):
It's becoming more common, especially for your multi-hospital health systems. So you're larger health systems, you're definitely going to see these central security operations centers in play.
James Marcella (10:34):
So you brought significant innovation, it sounds like. Any other examples of innovative practices that you're doing down at Lee Health?
Gloria Graham (10:41):
There's a couple of things when you think about people's personal safety. People's perception of safety and their psychological safety is something you cannot ignore, and you have to meet them exactly where they're at with that. You have to, so non-negotiable. They don't want to hear your fancy statistics and all of that stuff if they don't feel safe. From the feedback we've received, the wearable devices have helped to bolster that psychological safety for especially our emergency department nurses. The other thing that I think we are certainly leading the way on, and this is really something that I brought with me from working in higher ed for so many years, we replaced our emergency notification system last year. So our system that allows us to quickly text message or email or even do desktop alerts to our community when there's any kind of an emergency message that needs to go out.
(11:33):
One of the things that I opted for, and I wanted to make sure that the solution we selected had is a mobile safety app. And so we have a mobile safety app. It's called Guardian, and it is Lee Health specific. And again, in our CSOC, you'll see there's one screen that hangs up on the wall that's dedicated to our mobile safety app because anybody who has that mobile safety app and it's Lee Health staff specific, they can text message, call directly to our public safety office through that mobile safety app, and they have the ability to remain anonymous if they want. We don't always know who's contacting us. They can send us tips. We have, as you can imagine in a healthcare system, you've got people walking to their cars all different times of night.
(12:19):
And so we have the ability, it's called a safe walk, and they can activate the safe walk, let us know that they're leaving and walking to their car. And not only can we virtually walk with them, but in many instances we also have cameras that are along that pathway that they're going to, and we can watch them and do a virtual escort actually with eyes on when they're walking to their cars and at one particular hospital they use that and we've gotten good feedback on that.
James Marcella (12:46):
A lot of benefits with all of this integration. What are some of the challenges you faced, whether that was implementation or are there any ongoing challenges that technology brings to the table in a good and bad way, maybe?
Gloria Graham (12:58):
I think for us, and we talk openly on the team that I have the pleasure of caring for, we talk openly on not getting distracted. There's so many opportunities and so many things out there. And one of the things we've been heavily focused on these last two years is making sure our foundation is solid. And when I say that, I mean making sure our systems are healthy, making sure that we have the people in place either contractually or in some instances, we've actually brought in our systems' analyst duties and much of our maintenance duties, we've brought those in-house. We've actually found value and really big ROI on hiring our own team members to help maintain our systems. We have focused really heavily on making sure that we have a solid foundation and then let's be strategic about how we build out. We also are very conscientious, and I talk openly with our team about this, in making sure that we are involving our partners and information systems because when we do things, it impacts a network and that network is literally keeping people alive.
James Marcella (14:14):
Great point.
Gloria Graham (14:15):
And we have to be mindful of that, and so we make sure that we're in lockstep with them and that we're not doing things that are going to negatively impact the network.
James Marcella (14:28):
We haven't mentioned it, but we really have to bring up cyber security as something that is obviously important on the IT perspective, but since probably the vast majority of the technology you're leveraging for situational awareness for getting the security and safety job done throughout the day resides on the network, where are you at from a cybersecurity perspective and how much has that become a part of your life?
Gloria Graham (14:58):
One of the advantages I had was at a couple of my last police departments, security technology was in my portfolio. So I had a director of security technology. He was really good at bringing me along and helping me to understand the concerns and the technology and how everything integrated and those sorts of things. Because of that, I didn't come in completely blind to the security technology arena. And so when I got here, I realized that we had given up much of our system administration, really. I mean, we were allowing a third party integrator to administer our system and they had full access to our network and different things, and it just wasn't a model I was familiar with. I couldn't imagine that our IS team had signed off on it, but I thought, "Well, maybe they did," but I wanted to make sure that we were all on the same page with exactly what was going on.
(15:54):
When I really helped them to see the picture for what it was, and they realized how much access this integrator had been given. We all agreed that we needed to make changes, but you can't make those changes overnight. It took us about a year. It was costly. We had to replace a lot of servers and different things because many of the workstations that were being utilized to manage our technology integration were not even behind our firewall. So there were a lot of gaps and a lot of openness. We, over the last year, in fact, we just finished that project and we all feel much better.
James Marcella (16:35):
Do you have any specific requirements when you're looking at products and technology that need to be fulfilled before you add them to your network now?
Gloria Graham (16:44):
We do. And also requirements just for our own selves. So making sure we're changing the default passwords on every single little small device versus having thousands of them out there with the default password. We have both internal and external expectations. And again, that's something that we now work very closely and hand in hand with our IS partners on. And one of the other things that when we had a large project, we didn't always engage IS at the appropriate level and ask for true project management. Instead, we would do much of that work, get things installed and then say, "Can you make these jacks live? Or can you give us the details we need?" And now that's not the way we do business.
James Marcella (17:28):
Got it. And then ongoing management of these thousands of devices, you mentioned cameras alone, thousands of cameras, right? What's the plan around that? How do you handle lifecycle management of these products?
Gloria Graham (17:40):
That's something that we talk about and we have been talking about even more so over the last probably year and a half. We did just set up a project with our third party integrator to do maintenance twice a year on our cameras because sometimes it's just as important just to clean your cameras as it is to replace them. So we are doing that work. And then I mentioned that we do have a director over our public safety technology. He has an analyst that works with him. He has a low voltage check that works with him now. Those are all new positions that we added, and again, based on presenting what we believed would be an ROI, and it has turned out to be one in being able to have access to those services immediately when we need them. I'll give you a great real time example.
(18:29):
This year when Hurricane Ian hit, there were a lot of remarkable moments and anybody who's in our health system is fragile. They wouldn't be in the hospital if they didn't need us and they weren't having some sort of a challenge. But you think about babies and pediatric patients and just human nature, we automatically think of how vulnerable they are and how dependent they are on people taking care of them. And so when you think about the NICU patients especially, it's not just them, it's their parents too, because their parents are having... You talk about the level of trust you've got to have in an entity when they come to you and say, "We've got to evacuate and we're going to move your babies or baby to another hospital, and here's how we're going to help you get there as well." There were moments in the command center, especially when those kinds of operations were going on.
(19:23):
When I tell you, you could hear a pin drop, and most of the time you couldn't hear a pin drop in the command center because it's phones ringing and people moving, and, "I need this and I need that." But when those really big operations, those very serious critical operations were going on, you could hear a pin drop in there, and much of the time we're watching on our cameras. Because I'm all the way down by Bonita Springs, so we're watching the helipad and we're watching those helicopters take off, and we're like, "Okay, they're in the air. All right." And it gives me goosebumps right now just to talk about it because I can still just remember those feelings. It's really special, remarkable work that so many professionals had a hand in.
James Marcella (20:05):
And so your team in the security and safety side of things must have coordinated with outside resources to get all of this done. And you managed that all through a hurricane.
Gloria Graham (20:18):
The pediatric hospitals in Florida specifically have a really solid that I didn't know existed, and you wouldn't until a situation like this happens. But they have a predefined agreement in place that when something like this is to happen, they're just such a tight network that as soon as someone makes the call, that everyone just goes, and they literally, that's what happened. And so that's why our pediatric hospital was able to be evacuated so quickly and get those patients to places that they were going to be safer.
James Marcella (20:50):
This idea of having MOUs with other hospitals in the area and other organizations to respond to whatever incident occurs. I saw that you're trained in incident command.
Gloria Graham (21:02):
Yes.
James Marcella (21:02):
So proper planning up front really is what makes these stories good stories after the fact. What about COVID? We're not really a hundred percent out of COVID yet, but at least we're learning to live with it, or I guess is probably the best way to put it right now. But back in the early days, you took this job and you moved your family down to Florida at the beginning of COVID. What were some of the challenges that you had to face and Lee Health had to face throughout the last few years?
Gloria Graham (21:30):
I think there have certainly been challenges, especially surges because when COVID happens, when a surge would happen, not only would we have more patients, and so then the need and the burden is on the clinicians to take care of them is significantly increased. In addition to that, you have to minimize or eliminate visitors. And what we don't always think about with visitors is that many of those visitors are helping brush teeth, helping feed their loved ones, helping getting them to the bathrooms. Visitors are a very positive element within a hospital, but for their safety and the safety of our patients, we had to eliminate them. So not only are there more, as I mentioned, there's more increased obligation on our clinicians, and then this other resource that's kind of an informal resource also is eliminated. And so people are worried about, "What am I taking home to my own family?"
(22:28):
And I can tell you on social media, people would often see videos where you've seen nurses changing their clothes out in the parking lot and stuff, that really happens. They're taking those clothes off, putting them in their trunk and putting fresh clothes and shoes on so that they can go home and feel comfortable getting back into their houses. There were lots of things, lots of challenges, but I do think that there have been so many wonderful things, specifically in the realm of technology that have happened as a result of COVID. I think that it catapulted our acceptance and our ability and our willingness to do virtual medicine, which has been amazing. We are even exploring right now an expansion of that. One of the things that is facing many health systems throughout the country right now are an increase in mental health and behavioral health patients and the challenges associated with getting them the right services they need in a timely fashion.
(23:30):
And so hospitals become spaces where those patients are able to receive at least some treatment while they're waiting for placement in a place that they may need to go. And so while they're there, they need to have one-to-one or at least constant observation. In a health system it's, "Do you hire 50 more FTEs or do you find a way to be able to virtually interact with these patients and let them stay in their room and have some privacy and some peace and maintain some dignity?" So lots of good things I think have come from COVID as well.
James Marcella (24:01):
Hopefully we learned a little bit out of this one and learning. I'm going to jump back. You had mentioned earlier about the perception of safety, one's perception of security. I couldn't agree with you more. There's the reality of security and then there's one's perception of that reality. You talked about some technologies. You talked about Evolv for weapon screening. Are there any other technologies that you'd like to comment on specifically about creating an environment where people feel safe, not just staff and folks working there, but for patients coming into these different facilities?
Gloria Graham (24:37):
Right now, we are in a space with our own health system here where we're just being really financially responsible. And when you have a hurricane that hits you and hits your area as hard as it did us, the aftermath of that is you need to be fiscally responsible. And so we've been looking at all of the technology we have. We've been looking at all of our practices and the way that we do things just to make sure that they're all need-to-haves, not like-to-haves, right?
James Marcella (25:03):
Sure.
Gloria Graham (25:05):
Part of that has really been looking at things like visitor management systems that are enterprise-wide. These systems go throughout our health systems. You can imagine they're costly. And so is that something that we need to do? When I've been assessing all of the different things that we are doing, there are certain things that this system does that I can prove to you, and here are those numbers and here are those statistics, and here's what we know happened with these systems.
(25:31):
There are also some things that I can't measure for you, but I can tell you that if we didn't have them, here would be some of the negative impacts that we would inevitably feel and our staff would feel. And as a result, what does it mean when I don't feel safe in a space? Basic needs have to be provided, and safety is a basic need, and they need to feel safe. I know just from my own personal experiences and having lived in a lot of different environments in a lot of different size cities, that our perceptions are a reality as it relates to safety.
James Marcella (26:06):
From a technology perspective, what would be some advice that you give to those in your industry and maybe some other industries when it comes to, again, you have a lot of experience with deploying lots of different technology and systems. What's some advice you could give to people out there?
Gloria Graham (26:23):
When I lived in LA, we had active monitoring. We had an entire monitoring center with active monitoring. We had to create safe passages for people to walk just so they wouldn't get robbed. So you've got analytics where if someone stops for too long in that alley, you're getting a police response to that location. And that's not necessary where I am, but I still need to be responsive to people's safety and securities concerns here because that is their baseline. And if they don't feel safe and secure, then we have to figure out how to help that not be the case. So I think my best advice is to really get to know what the concerns are and meet your audience where they are. You have to do that. You have to meet them where they are. That way you can avoid either over securing.
(27:09):
So building this program that's really turns out to make people wonder, "Well, what is going on that they've got to have this here?" Or under delivering and brushing off their concerns. So meeting them where they are and listening and understanding, and of course, using all of your data points and then figuring out what is it that we need to tackle and what are our options for doing that? And then one of the things that I pride myself in doing is engaging the stakeholders that are going to be impacted by whatever it is we're doing and letting them have a seat at the table and letting us talk through, "Here are the things we're looking at," and there's more than one way to do most things.
James Marcella (27:49):
That's great advice.
Gloria Graham (27:50):
Let's talk through this and see what's going to be most impactful.
James Marcella (27:54):
Getting stakeholders to the table and giving them a voice clearly helps with the acceptance and adoption of sometimes newer technology that they haven't been using. So I like that. I think it's critical. Any examples of where you've done that? You've brought in stakeholders who may be impacted by technology and maybe had a negative experience around that? Where there you got pushback or did that ever stop you from implementing something that you wanted to?
Gloria Graham (28:21):
No, I'm pretty diplomatic. And I also feel like I'm not one who's going to force a particular pet project of my own on folks. I feel like I'm pretty practical. I work for the system. And so my job is to do what's best for the system, and that means everybody who's part of that. That's the perspective I use and I come to the table with whenever we are exploring some sort of new technology that's meant to impact safety and security.
James Marcella (28:49):
So Gloria, I'm going to ask you to put on or look into your crystal ball or be forward-thinking here and really take a stab at where do you see technology going in the healthcare space from a security and safety perspective, and how do you think that'll impact the business?
Gloria Graham (29:05):
I think there's great opportunity for technology. I'll start in the workforce arena. I think that we all are feeling the squeeze of a smaller workforce availability. Especially in healthcare, you think about one of our larger populations, the baby boomer generation, if you will, are at that time in life where many are engaging in some sort of healthcare services. And so us, like everyone, we are looking at how can we not compromise our service delivery, but also be realistic in our expectations of our workforce. And so some of the things that I've been exploring lately is really we've been digging down and looking at what are the things that our team members are spending time on? What are they spending the most time on, and how might we be able to accomplish those things in another way?
(30:00):
I've also had lots of conversations with colleagues in the industry and looking at this kind of stuff because I do think that there is opportunity for us to provide virtual services in some ways, as long as people are able still to communicate and to feel like they're being seen and heard and that they know they're being seen and heard.
(30:21):
So looking at some of that technology, I mentioned earlier that the virtual sitter technology, some of our patients who are in the midst of a mental health crisis, the last thing they want is a security officer in a uniform sitting in their room. They're already not in the best space or they wouldn't be needing help. And so how do we make sure that they're safe in our space, and how do we make sure that what we do to make them feel safe and make them safe, doesn't incite them or irritate them or cause them additional anxiety or fear? I think there's a huge opportunity for technology to support us in that arena and in turn, to support a whole population of our service population and help them in a time when they're in pretty significant need. So looking at that. Those are two of the areas that are on my mind most frequently are those two buckets, if you will.
James Marcella (31:18):
So regarding future technology, every industry, we just hear AI being thrown around and mentioned in so many different cases. Where do you see artificial intelligence in the healthcare system primarily, obviously through the lens of a security practitioner?
Gloria Graham (31:33):
I have been very intrigued not only by artificial intelligence, but augmented intelligence lately.
James Marcella (31:40):
What's the difference?
Gloria Graham (31:41):
Augmented intelligence, from my understanding at least, is the ability to augment what's really there. My sister was just telling me about a colleague of hers who's doing this work and they're using it when they go and they're surveying land, for instance, they're putting on an AI, an augmented intelligence device, and they're able to actually see the survey lines while they're looking at the space and looking in real time. And I'm going to tell you, this is a far out, this is something I have not researched, but this is a conversation my sister and I had the other day. And the reality is, is that more and more of our healthcare entities are arming their staff and are equipping them with firearms and expecting them to be that first line of defense in that first responder from a safety and security and violence prevention perspective. And so having managed and overseeing police departments for a number of years, I know the risk that is associated there.
(32:35):
And I also have managed officer-involved shootings with my own team members. I think about one of the things that happens is that, and this happens with every incident, is that when there's video camera footage afterwards, we're able to slow that video camera footage down frame by frame by frame and dissect it. And in many times, Monday morning quarterback it, right? But the human that was on that scene isn't afforded that. They're not able to do that. And I think about policing and how, yes, some technology has been embraced over the years and we've gotten better, but policing by and large has always been a very traditional profession and married to their tradition and different things. I think about things like augmented reality that what if there were a way for a police officer to have a device that when they look at something and someone turns quickly, they can determine it's a pack of cigarettes versus a gun.
(33:28):
It's a cell phone versus a gun. And that officer can immediately make a different decision. I think that there is the limitless opportunity as it relates to both artificial intelligence and augmented intelligence. Artificial intelligence is one of the things that sold me the most on the Evolv product, because that's what it does. It's able to tell you, you don't have to divest every single thing that has a sliver of metal in it, because that system is able to, through artificial intelligence and through repetition, it's able to determine a cell phone versus a weapon and those sorts of things. So I think that there's significant opportunity out there for us.
James Marcella (34:12):
What you described there is sort of the conundrum of video surveillance, is how do we actually monitor and get value out of these thousands of devices out there. And a lot of times, leveraging analytics to notify us of an event is one thing, but it still requires human judgment. We're not at the point where AI can actually take over a hundred percent. We still need a human to look at something and say, "Okay, no, that's all right."
Gloria Graham (34:37):
Again, I think that the opportunities are endless there. We just had our briefing call this morning. That's where everybody at every campus, the public safety leadership at each of those campuses tells us what's going on. We had a number of catalytic converter thefts at a parking lot in the last week. And so you think about artificial intelligence, and it's at this lot, that's a lot we used to park fleet vehicles. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere. And so they're there installing, we already had a project, we identified this as a problem location last year. So it's part of our new fiscal year projects is to install cameras out there, and they're there installing them. So the conversation becomes, "Okay, cameras are great, but we have over 2,500 of them, and we know that we're not going to watch them all at one time. So how do we utilize artificial intelligence and analytics to help us recognize out of these 2,500 cameras, this is the one I need to be watching right now."
(35:33):
And that's the goal, because we can't expect our three dispatchers to be answering calls for service and picking out one particular camera out of the thousands or one door that's propped open out of the hundreds, and that sort of thing. Those analytics and that artificial intelligence that's created by them helps out immensely.
James Marcella (35:53):
Well, Gloria, thank you so much for joining us today. Really fortunate to have you on and I learned a lot.
Gloria Graham (36:00):
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you, and I think talking out loud and talking through things, I learned something every single time, and I have been actually keeping a little bit of a list here on things that I actually need to follow up just because of our conversation. So thank you so much.
James Marcella (36:15):
It was great to have you on. Thank you so much.
Scott Dunn (36:22):
Thanks for listening to the Connect podcast.
James Marcella (36:25):
The Connect podcast is produced in collaboration with Gusto, a Matter company.
