Once the contract was awarded, it only took three months to put a new electronic locking system into operation at Klinikum Kassel in central Germany. During this short period of time, a main building was equipped with Winkhaus blueChip technology and locking plans were produced for the complex and its approximately 850 employees. Effective cooperation between all project participants ensured that work was completed without any hitches.

With its associated operational units, Klinikum Kassel is one of the largest hospitals in Germany under local government ownership. The owner is Gesundheit Nordhessen Holding AG, a regional healthcare company which supplies almost 68,000 patients with a complete range of outpatient and inpatient care, covering almost all possible medical and nursing services. Gesundheit Nordhessen Holding AG operates six hospitals: Klinikum Kassel with the Park Schönfeld Children's Hospital, the local district hospitals in Hofgeismar, Helmarshausen and Wolfhagen, and Bad Arolsen Hospital. The provision of services is made complete with two rehabilitation centres, the SWA outpatient nursing service and the Lindenberg and Fasanenhof sheltered accommodation centres for the elderly.

With a workforce of around 4,700, the holding is one of the largest employers in the North Hessen region and offers superior quality healthcare services. Significant investment has recently been made in emergency medical services. A new main building has emerged which houses both admissions and diagnosis. A new women's, mothers' and children's hospital is also currently being built in Kassel's Mönchebergstrasse and is scheduled to open in early 2012.

Card-based System
The new main building and the surgical hospital in Kassel received a Winkhaus electronic locking system in 2010. Other buildings are gradually being fitted with the system, as their existing systems can no longer be upgraded and incur high costs when keys are lost.

"The executive board initiated the investment," states Thomas Bäcker, Project Manager from Gesundheit Nordhessen's Central HR Department. "We have changed our access system over to cards to increase the level of security in the complex," explains Bäcker.

"We now work with hybrid cards which contain three chips in addition to a pass photo." Two RFID chips and a contact-based chip cover all the required functions and can also be put to other uses in the future. Employees' cards not only open doors in the hospital, but also unlock changing room lockers and safety deposit boxes. The contact-based chip serves as an identification medium and will also allow PC users to carry out their duties on different computers in the future, enabling them to take their work to any computer.

Employee ID photos are produced in the hospital's own photo studio and then printed onto the card. Different colour bars classify staff according to their field: red signifies medical staff and blue represents employees who provide direct care to patients, while service staff wear green bars. This colour coding system enables patients to easily identify the people they need to speak to. As patients rarely have contact with administrative staff, office staff cards are neutral.

Future-proof Technology
"The executive board had a very clear idea of what the new technology should provide," recalls Bäcker. In addition to future viability and user-friendly operation, system specifications also required a passive operating system. "To ensure greater flexibility and safety, we decided on offline technology with a virtual network," adds Winfried Neurath from Gesundheit Nordhessen's Central Building and Technology Department. "We started to take a good look around the market in early 2009 and came to the firm conclusion that Winkhaus's blueChip was the best to meet all these requirements," recalls Neurath.

Easy to Use
The hospital's virtual network currently consists of 25 online booking readers, 7 offline readers, 103 double knob cylinders and 690 intelligent design door handle sets (EZK). The EZK sets are a joint product development by renowned manufacturers FSB and Winkhaus and particularly impress thanks to their minimalist, beautifully shaped design. There are no protruding or affixed parts to spoil the doors' sleek appearance, as their high-performance, electronically-controlled reader units linked to mechatronic coupling elements are concealed in a tiny space in the rosette and are scarcely visible from the outside. The contactless system recognises an identification medium when it is brought near to the reader unit. The same applies to the blueChip double knob cylinder which employees use to open sliding doors. Here too, employees only need to hold their cards in front of the double cylinder for the door to unlock.