Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital (MLKCH) is home to one of the busiest emergency departments in Los Angeles County. The hospital, which opened in 2015, has led with security-first culture over the past seven years, receiving an Outstanding Security Performance Award (OSPA) for its commitment to safety and security.

MLKCH leadership sought biometrics to supplement their existing access control solution provided by AMAG Technology Symmetry Access Control. Mark Reed, MLKCH Director of Support Services, said he and his team were considering incorporating biometric card readers to provide additional security and verification. 

The hospital now secures employee access to its security operations center (SOC) with the Alcatraz AI Rock 3D Facial Authentication Platform. The hospital has over 2,000 employees, with more than 70 dedicated to the security department. It is these 70 employees that were initially enrolled into the biometric access control program at MLKCH.

"Our security department obviously has a huge role in maintaining a safe and secure hospital environment for patients, staff, and guests and therefore houses important employees and information," said Reed. "Controlling access to this security area is key and we wanted to ensure that only those individuals that are supposed to be coming and going are the ones that are actually coming and going."

By using 3D facial recognition, the hospital can control SOC access by replacing ID badges with facial scans. The Rock uses artificial intelligence to self-enroll employees, as well as passively detect people who didn’t authenticate to identify tailgating. The hospital aims to add more facial recognition access control across its information technology (IT) spaces and data centers.