A staff duress system
for 35,000 healthcare workers,
across 8 hospitals.
Medical personnel may face aggressive behavior or emergency situations where they must trigger an alert instantly and be accurately located indoors. Pole Star delivers real-time staff duress across an entire hospital network - on the Wi-Fi infrastructure already in place.
Staff safety, deployed at network scale
The project covers the full hospital network - 8 facilities, each with different layouts, scales and operational constraints.
What is covered
Mobile staff duress and responder tracking, deployed on existing Wi-Fi infrastructure already installed across the sites.
Protecting staff who can't wait for help to find them
This project takes place within Northwestern Medicine, a large hospital network operating multiple healthcare facilities. The deployment spans 8 hospitals, each with different layouts, scales and operational constraints.
In such complex healthcare environments, staff safety is a major concern. Medical personnel may face aggressive behavior or emergency situations where they must be able to trigger an alert instantly and be accurately located indoors to enable rapid response.
Deploy a reliable, real-time staff duress solution across multiple hospitals, supporting mobile staff and large volumes of users - while leveraging the existing Wi-Fi infrastructure already deployed across the sites.
From the press of a button to a located responder
The staff duress solution is powered by Pole Star indoor location technologies, combined with the hospital's existing network infrastructure.
Staff triggers the alert
Healthcare staff activate an alert using either mobile devices or dedicated BLE-enabled badges - whichever they carry.
Signals captured by existing Wi-Fi
BLE signals are picked up by the access points already installed across the site - no new sensor network.
Indoor position computed
Signals are processed to determine the real-time indoor location of the staff member.
Response teams notified instantly
Alerts and location data are transmitted immediately, ensuring fast situational awareness and efficient coordination during critical incidents.
Badge or phone - staff choose
Supporting both mobile devices and dedicated BLE badges matters in a hospital: clinical roles differ, and so does what people carry. One platform covers both without forcing a single form factor across 35,000 users.
An architecture built to scale across sites
The solution relies on Pole Star's indoor location platform and partner technologies - enabling scalable deployment across multiple hospital sites, even with varying infrastructure densities.
NAO® Mobile
For smartphone-based indoor localization and mobile staff duress.
NAO® Track NG
For real-time indoor positioning and alert management.
Continuous BLE exploitation
Ongoing use of BLE signals emitted by staff badges.
Cisco Spaces integration
Integration with Cisco Spaces and Cisco Wi-Fi infrastructure.
Real-time APIs
For interoperability with third-party staff safety platforms such as CriticalArc.
Because location data flows through real-time APIs, the system slots into the staff safety platform teams already use - rather than asking them to adopt a new one.
Clear operational and safety benefits
Faster response times
Thanks to real-time alerting and indoor localization.
Improved protection for healthcare staff
Across all hospital sites in the network.
Large-scale coverage
Without major infrastructure changes.
Seamless interoperability
With existing staff duress and safety systems.
A future-proof architecture
Capable of supporting tens of thousands of users.
35,000 staff, 8 hospitals, one platform - deployed on the network already in place.
When staff press the button, help needs to know where
If you're rolling out staff duress across multiple sites, we can show you how indoor location works on the Wi-Fi you already run - and how it plugs into the safety platform you already use.
- Runs on existing BLE-enabled Cisco Wi-Fi infrastructure
- Badges or mobile devices - staff choose
- Real-time APIs for third-party staff safety platforms