University College London, Eastman Dental Institute

The Eastman Dental Institute (EDI) at University College London is a global leader for postgraduate dentistry and world class research centre. With a recent influx of funding from UCL as part of the university’s 15 year masterplan, the Institute moved into two new premises, the Royal Free Hospital and the Rockefeller building, the latter being the site of new teaching labs, surgeries, meeting rooms and a post graduate resource centre. The EDI was formally opened by Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal on Thursday 13th May 2021.

At the core of the technology requirements for the Rockefeller building was a Crestron NVX AV over IP system, an ecosystem of endpoints designed to work with network and security protocols. With the benefit of extensive experience in delivering NVX systems, Reflex was appointed as the audio visual systems integrator.

Yag Depala, Reflex’s sales and marketing director explains “UCL’s AV facilities are all of exceptional quality, but even by the university’s standards, this project was cutting edge. As an ancient, listed building, the option to knock down walls and create open spaces was not available. The only way to make the use of the Rockefeller building feasible was to use technology as an enabler, to interconnect people and content in real time, between rooms and across floors.”

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The Requirements

The project, which extended over four floors, was planned with three target audiences in mind, all of whom had different requirements from the AV systems that were installed.

The students’ needs were at the heart of the design, with space carefully planned to enhance their learning and research; a large modular clinical teaching space, technical labs and an outpatients’ surgery, as well as a student resource centre with collaborative study pods and relaxation area.

Teaching staff needed the ability to effectively educate banks of post grads, with individual workstations incorporating camera feeds so that they could teach multiple students from one central point whilst allowing tutors to observe and guide each of them individually.

Finally, the professional staff required spacious office space and meeting facilities designed for modern work practices, with collaboration at their core.

The Solution

One of the key features of this project was the set-up of the laboratories on the fourth floor, where most of the teaching and learning takes place.

For students, there are 71 individual clinical workstations with a workbench and a mannequin head to mimic real-life practice. Each is fitted with an overhead dental microscope and Marshall Electronics 4K live camera and HP 24” FHD monitor. This allows every student to receive bespoke guidance and demonstrations, along with the option to record their work.

Students can also connect their laptop manually or wirelessly to the system and switch between their monitor and the information being shown on the lecturer’s display by using a Crestron push button controller, although this can be overridden by the master control.

The lecturer’s station has a display with a camera, to allow practical demonstrations to the students. A Crestron TSW-1060-B-S touch panel enables them to control what is shown on every monitor in the room. A key feature of the Crestron NVX AV over IP solution is that it not only allows flexible switching between different visual and audio systems within the same room, but also between different rooms and across multiple floors.

This flexibility has really enhanced the teaching within the Institute, as lecturers on the fourth floor can speak directly to the dentists who are actively working on patients on the second floor via a Dante audio over IP Beyerdynamic Unite AP4 microphone system. The dentist in the surgery can stream a live visual feed to all 71 students at once with almost zero latency, giving them real life, engaging experiences without any disruption to the patient. The visual is taken using a GoPro Hero 5, converted for microscope mounting and an overhead PTZ camera.

Professor Stephen Porter, Institute director says “The new facilities allowed us to seamlessly transfer to on-line teaching in many subject areas. Indeed we have been able to advance our educational strategy by several years in a matter of months. This has been aided by the software and hardware being intuitive and easy to use, a major bonus for staff and students with perhaps a limited appreciation of contemporary technologies.

The delivery of distance teaching has been greatly advanced, such that we are now able to provide teaching in 4K around the globe. We have already delivered teaching to the US and Egypt and are rolling out plans to several other countries, for example Greece and Saudi Arabia.”

For professional staff, conference equipment has been added to meeting rooms located on the second and third floors, comprising NEC UHD displays, Huddly IQ cameras, and Crestron Smart sound bars.

Laptops can connect to the displays via HDMI, display port and also wirelessly via Crestron Air Media. The camera connection is simply connected via USB through a Crestron flip top table with flip top cable cubby allowing BYOD (bring your own device) easy connectivity.

The system is controlled using a Crestron MPC3-201-B push button controller mounted to the meeting room table, whilst the Crestron controller gives the ability to switch sources, volume levels, and turn the display on/off. The new spaces not only provide effective meeting facilities but support collaboration both internally and with other institutions.

The Challenges

The installation was a complex one and not without a number of challenges.

The Rockefeller building is a beautiful, listed Victorian construction located in Bloomsbury. Like many of its age, there was asbestos present. And whilst an asbestos register is kept by the university, it was only once work had started that the extent of the risk was exposed. Once uncovered, the installation was put on hold until experts could deal with the problem.

Site lockdowns due to COVID also posed a challenge. It resulted in some of the pre-requisite work by UCL staff not being completed in line with the original timetable. The requirement to work in a COVID safe way also meant that the Reflex team was much smaller than under normal circumstances, to minimise the number of people on site at any one time.

Toss into the mix a firmware glitch that threw up compatibility issues, needing Reflex to work with the manufacturer to resolve, and you had a perfect storm to cause delays. But because the Institute was one of the few faculties of the university that remained open, with students attending lectures in person, the requirement to complete the project by the October 2020 term start was set in stone.

According to Sam Barter, Reflex’s project manager, “both Reflex and the university’s AV and IT teams learned so much on the project, about how to configure the system. It’s certainly one of the most challenging and rewarding installations I’ve overseen.”

The Result

The Institute now boasts a suite of teaching spaces that allows an increased number of dental trainees to safely refine their practical skills.

Professor Porter enthuses “The capabilities of the AV/IT facilities that Reflex has delivered are remarkable. We now have the ability to provide postgraduates within the building with the opportunity to witness live demonstrations of new techniques, and for the supervisors to monitor and advise the students as they undertake procedures in our new skills facility. This not only enhances the educational experience but has allowed us to safely deliver top notch training in the age of social distancing – something perhaps unique to ourselves within the world of dental education.

The feedback from teachers and students has been remarkably positive. Of course there were some minor initial issues but that was to be expected given the complexity of our requirements. What we now have will power us forward to further our reputation in the delivery of education to dentists, who in turn will be able to enhance the oral health care and lives of many.”

Key Manufacturers

Crestron

Control systems: Crestron RMC3

NVX AV-over-IP system: Crestron DM NVX 352

Ceiling speaker: Crestron SAROS IC4T-W-T-EACH

flip top table: Crestron TSW-1060-TTK-B-S

https://www.crestron.com/

Beyerdynamic

Dante audio over IP: Beyer dynamic Unite AP4

https://europe.beyerdynamic.com/

GoPro

Hero 5 camera: GoPro Hero5 Black – Ribcage conversion