The Nurse Station Alarm (NSA) is an optional accessory for Beehive Horizon and Beehive Millennium acquisition systems typically used in a Long-term Seizure Monitoring environment.

The purpose of NSA is to alert staff of patient conditions associated with seizure monitoring procedures:
• Patient Pushbutton Events
• Automatic SzAC (software) Seizure Detections
• Patient Cable Disconnects

The notification consists of both a visual indicator via a flashing display on the PC monitor and an audio indicator via the PC's audio speakers.

The NSA is a multi-bed system which allows a single station to communicate with multiple data acquisition/recording systems. It communicates with the acquisition systems via network using TCP/IP protocol, therefore, the acquisition systems and the NSA-PC must be connected and operational on the same network. The communication between the NSA and the acquisition system is two-way, allowing nurses' station staff to also mark Pushbutton Events, which will get annotated with the EEG recording.

Although referred to as the Nurse Station Alarm, NSA can be installed on other PCs outside of the nurses' station, or on the acquisition system itself. Multiple PCs running the NSA software can function independently and communicate with either the same or different acquisition systems, as long as they are on the same network. For example, a centralized seizure monitoring unit may monitor patients both in an adult area and in a pediatric area. The NSA in the adult nurses' station will only notify the staff of events associated with the adult patients. The NSA in the pediatric nurses' station will only notify the staff of events associated with the pediatric patients.

To assist with patient care, Grass Technologies offers additional hardware options to allow display of waveform and/or patient video at remote locations.