Darent Valley Hospital has recently chosen Nedap's AEOS security management platform to secure their drug cupboards. Access to the drug cupboards can be managed within AEOS, via the standard integrated Locker Management functionality. This micro-level access control functionality is putting an end to key-management.

The hospital's Intensive Therapy Unit housed 16 cupboards with key based locks. Approximately 65 nurses hold keys for the drug cabinets. Due to the frequency of use, the locks were regularly wearing out, causing disruption while locks were replaced, getting extra keys cut and issuing keys to people working across different shifts.

The key based locks in the existing cupboards were replaced with Nedap MIFARE electronic locks, integrated into the AEOS security management platform. The staff were provided with MIFARE Smart Cards instead of keys. This solved the problem of locks wearing out and brought key-management to an end.

In addition, AEOS Locker Management enables access to the drug cupboards to be managed from a web-based software application. As each person is registered within the system, the user-friendly software application enables a supervisor to quickly and easily check who has accessed the drug cupboards at any time. In this way, it became not only an extremely practical, but also a secure solution with full audit capabilities. At Nedap Security Management, we call this micro-level access control.

Currently Darent Valley Hospital uses the Locker Management functionality of the AEOS security management platform to secure their drug cupboards. In the future, Darent Valley Hospital could choose to easily expand the system with other AEOS features, such as Access Control, Intrusion or CCTV.