Three incidents of gun violence at hospitals have made headlines in the past two weeks.
On February 24, a shooting at UPMC Memorial Hospital in York, Pennsylvania left two people dead and five people wounded. A week later, a gunman shot a security guard at an HonorHealth hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona — and a week after that, a patient at a Catholic Health hospital in Buffalo, New York sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Healthcare is already struggling to retain its workforce — so hospitals simply cannot afford for their workers to feel like their physical safety may be in jeopardy. That’s why some healthcare providers, including Hackensack Meridian Health and JPS Health Network have partnered with AI gun detection company ZeroEyes.
ZeroEyes was founded in 2018 by a team of former Navy SEALs, noted Sam Alaimo, one of the company’s co-founders.
He said the idea for the company came from its current CEO, Mike Lahiff. He was picking up his daughter from school shortly after the Parkland high school shooting left 17 people dead, and she told him the school had conducted an active shooter drill that day.
“He asked the school, because he saw they had security cameras everywhere, ‘What are you doing with the cameras?’ And the answer was nothing — that they would be used after the fact. That was where he got the idea — how do we take the security camera, which is already everywhere, already ubiquitous, and make it left of bang? How do we make it so that it picks up a gun before a trigger is squeezed and before anything bad happens?” Alaimo explained.
“Left of bang” is a military concept that emphasizes taking a proactive approach to potential threats and taking action based on observation.
It took ZeroEyes about two years to build its algorithm for gun detection, and the company took its product to market in 2020. The startup initially focused on selling its AI solution to schools — but with schools closed during the pandemic lockdown, ZeroEyes had to pivot to survive, Alaimo said.
“We realized that what made us good with a property management group or in a subway platform or in a grocery store, made us even better in a school hallway or in the atrium of a hospital. So we decided to stay with all these verticals,” he stated.
ZeroEyes leverages its customers’ existing security cameras, meaning there’s no need for hospitals to buy additional equipment to use the product, Alaimo noted.
He also pointed out that ZeroEyes algorithm focuses on object detection — not facial recognition — which helps the solution stay HIPAA-compliant.
The main goal of ZeroEyes’ software is to identify a gun before shots are ever fired, Alaimo remarked.
“The gun is typically exposed outdoors before it goes indoors — that’s really where we want to pick it up. We typically use cameras, both outdoors and indoors, to make sure we pick it up on its way in. If it does happen to get in, we’ll pick it up there as well so law enforcement can then go directly to the threat and stop the shooter,” he explained.
He also highlighted the subtlety of ZeroEyes’ software.
Hospitals are places of healing, and no one wants to walk into one feeling like they’re entering “a prison or military base or someplace with barbed wire and fences and bulletproof glass and armed security guards,” Alaimo noted.
In his eyes, the company offers a layer of security that does not militarize an environment or make it feel unfriendly.
“It is a strong layer of proactive protection that does need to scare your patients. That’s one of the main selling points we have with healthcare — this accomplishes their mission of keeping their people safe and at the same time, not feeling like they’re under threat every time they’ll walk through the door,” Alaimo declared.
Photo: Aitor Diago, Getty Images
