Health Sciences Centre to pilot AI weapon detection to address rising violence

Shared Health is installing an AI weapon detection system at the entrance to facilities at Manitoba's Health Sciences Centre as it moves toward addressing a series of violent incidents at the downtown Winnipeg facilities.

The provincial health-care authority said the detectors will be placed at the emergency department and at the Crisis Response Centre as part of a new pilot starting later this month that will run for several weeks. They will not be metal detectors, but scan people using artificial intelligence.

"There are big advantages for us and one is the level of intrusiveness," said Dr. Shawn Young, chief operating officer at the HSC. "If you're using metal detector technology, it means you have to pause, you need to take all the metal out. You could cause a backlog and a wait as well."

The pilot would make the HSC a pioneer for the use of this technology in health-care settings. It would become the second Canadian hospital which has had such devices — already in place in facilities like Princess Auto Stadium — installed at its emergency department entrances.

The Windsor Regional Hospital has had AI detectors at its doors for almost a year. Officials there have been advising the HSC on standards of practice for the devices, Young said.

The emergency department "is a high-risk area," said Michael Broderick, manager of safety and security at the Windsor, Ont., hospital.

"Having that layer of security has been really well received by the staff, also by the public."

Broderick said that the system has been able to detect more than 1,800 knives and edged weapons over the last nine months.

But some security analysts aren't convinced the technology is sophisticated enough to do what it promises.

"The idea is to take something that most people don't like … and to make it more convenient," said Conor Healy, director of government research with IPVM, a research firm covering security technology.

"The problem is that the technology has not been able to achieve this."

Evolv Technologies, a sector leader with hundreds of clients in the sports, casino, education and health-care sectors, has run afoul of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Trade Commission after it allegedly exaggerated claims about its products' capabilities.

In New York, the Utica School System got rid of its system after a student at a high school managed to get a knife through, and stabbed a classmate during a fight.

Healy said that while other companies are more honest about their technical challenges, they all share similar functional issues.