- 15 min
At our recent ELEV8 event, we had the pleasure of hosting Albert Kasselman, Industrial Control Manager at Mediclinic, alongside Andrew from Controltech-Cape, to share insights into Mediclinic’s ambitious digital transformation journey. What started as a one-year project has now evolved into a scalable, centralised system that monitors critical services across 50 hospitals and 75 facilities in South Africa.
This is a story of integration, scalability, and life-critical monitoring, all built on Ignition, enhanced with Canary for analytics, and powered by MQTT for secure, real-time data communication.
Prefer watching instead of reading? Watch the full case study here.
The Challenge: Fragmented Legacy Systems Across Multiple Facilities
Mediclinic, part of an international hospital group with a footprint in the UAE, Switzerland, and South Africa, identified the need to monitor services and plant equipment across its facilities.
“We had SCADA systems deployed about 10 years ago. Each facility did whatever they needed to do to get the system running, and there was no standard architecture or oversight.”
— Albert Kasselman, Mediclinic
This led to:
- 50 separate SCADA systems, one per hospital
- Manual data capture (clipboards and paper)
- Limited visibility across facilities
- Siloed data in multiple databases, including BMS, energy, and plant systems
- Difficulty in reporting for sustainability, water, electricity, and carbon emissions
- Increased risk and reactive maintenance
In short, critical infrastructure monitoring was inefficient, and lives depended on reliable systems — power, water, oxygen — at every facility.
The Vision: Centralised Monitoring with Local Reliability
Mediclinic wanted a system that could:
- Centrally monitor critical systems while allowing each hospital’s equipment to operate independently (life support critical)
- Implement standardised alarming with escalation protocols
- Log process variables in a central historian
- Provide easy maintenance and support across hospitals
- Support scalability and rapid deployment for multiple facilities
“By the end of last year, I went from knowing nothing about Ignition to being trained in scripting. Now I can centrally manage all our systems, reports, and alarms.”
— Albert Kasselman, Mediclinic
The Solution: Ignition + Canary + MQTT
Scalable Architecture with Edge and Central Gateways
The system was designed to utilise Ignition Edge devices at each hospital, which collect data from OPC devices using Modbus TCP or BACnet protocols. MQTT is used to securely transmit data from each Edge gateway to the central Ignition gateway, enabling:
- Local monitoring of the network connection to the central server is lost
- Real-time, reliable data streaming across all hospitals
- Central storage in Canary, providing a lightweight, time-series historian for trending, reporting, and analytics
- Integration with SQL databases for specific queries and non-time-series data
“Using MQTT, we can ensure that the data reaching Canary is exactly what originated at the source, unmanipulated and audit-ready.”
— Gary Lowenstein, Element8
Unified Control Centre (UCC)
A single access point for users across all hospitals, the UCC enables:
- Monitoring of edge nodes and device health
- Viewing reports for each site
- Dynamic visualisation of data from hospitals in real-time
- Standardised dashboards for water, electricity, and oxygen metrics — critical for patient safety
“No matter the hospital, the screens look the same. It doesn’t matter if it’s Bloemfontein or Cape Town — operators see the same interface and data.”
— Albert Kasselman, Mediclinic
Standardisation, UDTs & Naming Conventions
Implementing user-defined types (UDTs) and adhering to strict naming conventions effectively addressed the long-standing challenge of inconsistent device naming across hospitals. This made scaling, reporting, and maintenance much more straightforward.
Security and Compliance
Mediclinic’s medical data is highly sensitive. Legacy systems lacked encryption and security. With Ignition, MQTT security, and integration with Entra ID, the new system:
- Ensures secure, centralised authentication
- Eliminates the need for multiple user accounts per facility
- Meets cybersecurity requirements, giving peace of mind to internal teams
Canary for Analytics and Reporting
Canary historian plays a central role in:
- Storing long-term operational data
- Providing views for reporting and trending
- Integrating seamlessly with MQTT for real-time, accurate, single-source-of-truth data
- Allowing rapid and standardised comparison of key metrics across facilities
“We use Canary for trending and reporting. It’s lightweight, scalable, and integrates seamlessly with MQTT and Ignition. It gives us the data visibility we didn’t have before.”
— Andrew Felton, Controltech-Cape
Training, Culture Change, and Super Users
Recognising that technology alone isn’t enough, Mediclinic invested in people and processes:
- Super users trained across five regions using Inductive University
- Ticketing system embedded in Ignition for support requests
- Centralised team oversees changes while allowing local hospitals to request assistance
- Standardised processes ensure consistent, high-quality operation across all sites
“Training super users in each region ensures that even if the main team is busy, hospitals have immediate support for new devices or reporting needs.”
— Albert Kasselman, Mediclinic
Results So Far
The system now delivers:
- Centralised, scalable monitoring across 50 hospitals
- Standardised, consistent dashboards and reporting
- Real-time alerts for critical systems (power, water, oxygen)
- Reliable, real-time MQTT data flow to Canary for trending and reporting
- Improved data visibility and decision-making for technical managers
- Rapid project deployment and integration for new hospitals or devices
“This project will never really end. As we expand and see new opportunities, we continuously evolve. But what we’ve built already makes a huge difference.”
— Albert Kasselman, Mediclinic
Why This Matters
Mediclinic’s journey demonstrates how a thoughtful combination of Ignition, MQTT, and Canary can:
- Solve complex, multi-facility monitoring challenges
- Provide secure, real-time visibility for life-critical infrastructure
- Enable scalable, repeatable, and maintainable solutions
- Drive culture and capability change alongside technology
From legacy SCADA silos to a centralised, secure, and scalable architecture, Mediclinic is setting a new benchmark in hospital infrastructure monitoring.
Huge congratulations to Albert, Andrew, and the entire team, your dedication to patient safety, operational efficiency, and innovation is truly inspiring.