Smart Monitoring of Backup Generators in Viamed Salud Hospitals and Healthcare Centers

Context

On Monday 28 April 2025, Spain suffered the worst power outage in its recent history. From 12:33 p.m. until late into the night, the national electricity supply was completely interrupted, except in the Canary Islands, also affecting its neighboring countries, Portugal, Andorra and France. The magnitude and duration of the incident led to a state of widespread uncertainty, paralyzing critical infrastructure and causing major public concern across the country.

Challenge

In this challenging context, ensuring the operation of critical infrastructure was essential, particularly in the health sector.

Viamed Salud, one of the leading private hospital groups in Spain, with 15 hospitals and 12 healthcare centers, faced a critical mission: to keep its facilities fully operational throughout the blackout.

The challenge was not only to ensure that the backup generators would start, but also to maintain full, real-time, and centralized visibility into each one, including the amount of diesel fuel available.

Solution

Thanks to the strategic collaboration between Viamed and Aritium, based on the deployment of private LoRaWAN^® networks across all centers of the hospital group, these facilities were already equipped with an advanced backup generator monitoring system. This system was crucial during the blackout.

The solution deployed by Aritium is characterized by the following aspects, which together form a robust, centralized system capable of providing a comprehensive overview of all backup generators designed to ensure uninterrupted energy supply to Viamed’s hospitals and healthcare centers:

• Vibration sensors: IoT (Internet of Things) devices that detect when the backup generator’s engine is running based on its vibrations. This feature enables not only real-time confirmation of generator startup in critical scenarios, but also the ability to verify their shutdown once the main power supply is restored, without requiring integration or significant investment in the BMS.
• Fuel level sensors: IoT devices equipped with submersible probes for measuring the fuel level in each generator’s diesel tank.
• Aritium Platform: Aritium’s advanced platform that integrates IoT and AI (Artificial Intelligence). It centralizes all the information, allowing real-time remote visualization of each generator's status, and enables the configuration of automatic alerts and notifications to warn when a backup generator starts or stops, or when fuel levels drop below a predefined minimum threshold.

In addition, all LoRaWAN networks deployed across Viamed centers offer full coverage, as each gateway is installed into an Aritium Box, our wireless communication box that integrates the gateway and the Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). This design ensures connectivity even during extended power outages. In fact, during the blackout, this feature was key to keeping the LoRaWAN networks fully operational and ensuring uninterrupted communication between the devices and the platform, without depending on the conventional power grid.

Benefits

The implementation of this solution delivered multiple tangible and strategic benefits to Viamed Salud during the April 28 blackout:

• Real-time and remote control: Instant visibility of the operational status and fuel levels of all backup generators.
• Critical failure prevention: Early detection of low fuel levels or engine malfunctions.
• Knowledge: Ability to make informed decisions in critical situations for resource prioritization, technical team mobilization, and fast, coordinated responses, avoiding improvisation.
• Safety: Minimum care conditions were guaranteed in all centers without interruptions or significant incidents.
• Uninterrupted operation: Thanks to the integration of gateways and UPS systems into the Aritium Box, the LoRaWAN sensor networks remained active across all centers, ensuring service continuity even without electricity supply.

During this national energy crisis, Viamed’s executive team was able to see first-hand the differential value of this solution:

“We knew it was a good tool, but the real value became evident on 28 April. In such a critical context as the blackout, having real-time visibility of the generators’ status and fuel levels, thanks to a network of sensors backed up by UPS systems, allowed us to respond with confidence, speed, and precision. We didn’t have to guess what was happening. We knew, and within five minutes of the incident, we already had an action plan in place for each hospital”. Ignacio Narváez, Corporate Director of Engineering and Investments at Viamed Salud.

About Viamed

Viamed Salud is a health group whose mission is to provide safe and effective health care to its patients with the appropriate means and with maximum professionalism and empathy. All its centers are characterized by integrating specialized professionals for the treatment of different pathologies, prioritizing human and close treatment with our patients.

The centers of Viamed are characterized as being modernly equipped in their hotel facilities and equipped with the latest medical-surgical technology to be able to offer high-quality healthcare services. In addition, they promote their objectives by defending a policy of respect and environmental sustainability

For more information, visit www.viamedsalud.com, X and LinkedIn.

About Aritium

Aritium is a startup certified by Enisa whose aim is to transform the way hospitals and healthcare organizations operate around the world through the development of the "Smart Healthcare" concept. To achieve this, through the Aritium Platform, it develops innovative solutions based on IoT and AI, aiming to automate processes, optimize resource usage, and maximize efficiency in healthcare, allowing professionals to dedicate more time to what they do best: caring for patients.

For more information, visit www.aritium.com, X and LinkedIn.

LoRaWAN^® is a mark used under license from the LoRa Alliance^®.