St Anthony's is an independent charitable hospital in the private sector and is a major provider of cardiac surgery. Its sister organization, St Raphael's Hospice, provides a free service to local residents. "When we are not using the centre for our own purposes, we rent it to outside users, which include local NHS organizations, councils and commercial and voluntary organisations. All of these users expect the equipment to be easy to operate and produce the best in image quality," says Philip Cook, head of marketing at St Anthony's Hospital. Cook adds, it is our intention in the future, to extend the use of the conference centre with live video-conferencing links to operating theatres for the training of surgeons and operating theatre staff in association with post graduate centres."
The meeting room has the capacity to hold 120 people. The DLA-SX21E is mounted on a rear projection rig and projects onto a specially designed "high-gain" rear projection screen, enabling the projector to be used in high ambient lighting conditions. The projection system and associatedaudio and video equipment are controlled using an AMX radio remote system. This enables all the equipment to be managed simply from one remote, with an interactive touch screen making operation very straightforward for the many different users.
Richard Haines, managing director at Hocken AV says: "The rear projection system has several advantages. We have designed it so that the JVC projector is hidden behind the screen and wall and is invisible to the audience. When AV material is not required, no equipment needs to be carried out of the room - it's already locked away. If the presenter wants to point to information on the screen there are no shadows to contend with, and no projector glare to worry about. The screen is made of a high contrast material and coupled with the high resolution image from the SX21, our solution provides a pleasing, clear and accurately coloured image that we felt would give the best possible results in this medical application."
(Lee Baldock)
