Eaton’s EPMS, Foreseer upgrade proves to be just what the doctor ordered for medical center

Background 

As a large university-based medical center located in the Southeast, the healthcare entity handles the needs of millions of patients each year, along with the demands of a growing research institution. As with many healthcare institutions, the operation is an amalgamation of buildings, with equipment of various vintages and vendors, each requiring different levels of attention based on their health and criticality. As such, the importance of ensuring uptime throughout the facilities’ electrical, water, air and HVAC systems has never been higher. As a longtime customer of Eaton’s electrical power monitoring system, Foreseer (EPMS), the medical center had relied on the solution for more than a decade to keep a constant pulse on critical parameters within its data center.

Challenge

In 2021, the medical center sought to upgrade its EPMS, a move that would not only extend its monitoring coverage, but enable the center to take advantage of new features, reporting capabilities and heightened cybersecurity. With various utilities feeding into the electrical system with different backup and emergency power system designs, the facilities team needed to be able to quickly identify critical alarms and prioritize their response when issues occur. Considering the complexity of the operation, this wasn’t always a straightforward task when accounting for the actual loading on redundant power feeds and failover systems. Because of this, having a monitoring system that could unify the various sources of data was key.

Beyond the ability to quickly respond to issues, the healthcare organization also wanted to maintain a clear understanding of the health of various sub-systems, a critical step toward prioritizing preventative maintenance activities while keeping expenses contained. In addition, the team desired an advanced software solution that would not only provide notifications both on and off campus, but could facilitate detailed status reports without manual intervention. Having all information organized  into a single system — where staff wasn’t required to spend an exorbitant amount of time in front computer screens to extract necessary insight — was another key requirement.

To keep pace with these accelerating demands, the hospital realized that it needed to upgrade its EPMS to keep pace with the growing demands and complexity of their healthcare facility.

Solution 

With the ability to connect an operation’s vast array of devices — regardless of the manufacturer or model — Eaton’s EPMS facilitates real-time power and environmental system monitoring at a single facility or multiple locations throughout the world, helping organizations reduce power consumption costs and avoid unplanned downtime due to system failure.

Within the medical center’s data center, Eaton’s EPMS has long supported a host of critical applications used by the clinical and research teams, many of which are tied to patient care. Although the facility was initially monitoring only its data centers and critical power chain — including two electrical substations, generators, automatic transfer switches (ATSs), uninterruptible power systems (UPSs) and remote power panels (RPPs) — with the upgrade, it expanded coverage to include power entering the medical center campus and all remote locations. This extended level of monitoring now gives the medical center complete visibility into the electrical system and all critical equipment, ensuring that data center, electrical shop and operations management teams stay informed at all times. 

"These systems are all crucial to the care of our patients,” a representative explains. “It is invaluable for us to be able to access everything in one single monitoring system."

One of the biggest advantages Eaton’s EPMS provides the medical center is its integration with other systems. For example, the system automatically sends data to the medical center’s building automation system (BAS), supplying a complete picture of their chiller and HVAC system status. Furthermore, by streamlining the flow of data into the BAS, Eaton’s EPMS reduces costs while also making the normalized data available to other areas such as the data center, providing a complete picture of overall operations.

"We rely on the EPMS to be the single source of truth for our facility,” the same representative confirms.

In fact, this capability recently helped the medical center avoid potential catastrophe when the EPMS alerted facility and data center personnel that the chiller plant was experiencing a loss of cooling. Receiving notification via email, text message and system alerts, the medical center’s staff leveraged the EPMS to monitor the rising temperatures within the data center — enabling facilities personnel to triage the chiller system while providing the leadership team with real-time visibility of the issue through dashboards. The system not only furnished the data center team with valuable insight but also made it possible for them to generate reports showing rising temperatures so the issue could be escalated to upper management.

Another key aspect of the upgrade has been the medical center’s ability to utilize the Foreseer Reporting Services (FRS) package, which simplifies numerous processes for the medical center. FRS transforms complex data from a multitude of devices into concise reports, eliminating the need to export data for assessment and converting it into consumable, actionable information. For example, the medical center relies on FRS to create Joint Commission compliance reports for their emergency power systems.

"We get customized reports generated based on the data that Foreseer collects,” the medical center representative explains. “FRS converts it into useful and actionable information for us."

Furthermore, Eaton’s EPMS makes it easy for a wide variety of medical center users to navigate and interpret information, including electric shop lead electricians, data center directors, facilities team members and the data center operations team. With an intuitive interface and next-generation HTML5 web graphics that support Edge, Chrome and Safari, the EPMS allows users to produce custom floor plans, multiple levels of electrical one-line diagrams, equipment elevations and site plans. Even more, the medical center’s IT and networking teams value the cybersecurity enhancements included in the system’s upgrade. Eaton is constantly working to strengthen the cybersecurity of its EPMS and encourages customers to readily adopt new versions in order to obtain the latest features and protections. Developed according to the Eaton Secure Development Life Cycle (SDLC), the EPMS is assessed to ensure secure access controls, secure communication and authenticity checking are all implemented according to industry standards and best practices. Eaton actively monitors for, addresses and communicates any vulnerabilities and weaknesses throughout the lifecycle. In addition to the cybersecurity enrichments, the upgrade allows the medical center to adhere to IT best practices of using the latest OS and SQL database versions. 

With the upgrade complete, the medical center opted to have individuals from several departments trained by Eaton, so they can extract the full value of their investment. In addition, the organization purchased a customer care contract, which not only makes it easy for them to adopt and benefit from the latest versions, but provides ongoing on-site and remote support. While physical equipment such as generators, switchgear and breakers are visible and are often the first projects to receive limited funding, more management teams are seeing the efficiency and operational benefits of investing in advanced EPMS tools that allow them to do more with their limited staff and resources.

Results 

• Thanks to upgrading to the latest version of Eaton’s EPMS, the medical center is now able to:
• Maintain a comprehensive view of its entire power environment
• Transform complex data into valuable, useful information
• Easily integrate the EPMS with its BAS and other systems
• Expeditiously respond to events to avoid disruption to patient care or comfort
• Simplify the Joint Commission reporting process 
• Streamline processes and reduce costs
• Ensure the highest level of cybersecurity
• Receive ongoing support and training