What a duress alarm is, and the standards that apply in Australia

A duress alarm is a fixed or wearable device that lets a worker summon help without signalling that they have done so. The silence is the design requirement: an alert the aggressor can see or hear escalates the incident it was meant to defuse.

Is AS 4485 mandatory in Australia?

Security in Australian healthcare facilities is guided by AS 4485:2021 Security for healthcare facilities, published in two parts — AS 4485.1 General requirements and AS 4485.2 Procedures guide — which replaced the 1997 edition. It is not law. An Australian Standard binds a facility only where legislation, health service policy or a contract calls it up; in Victoria the enforceable duty sits in the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, which requires an employer to provide and maintain a working environment that is safe so far as is reasonably practicable.

Code Grey, Code Black and what your system has to match

Hospital emergency colour codes come from AS 4083 Planning for emergencies — Health care facilities. In Victoria, Code Grey is the response to unarmed aggression and Code Black to an armed or weapon-based threat. The labels are not applied consistently across states — NSW services commonly use Code Black for the situation Victoria calls Code Grey. A duress system has to match the codes and escalation paths your facility actually runs, not a generic template.

Duress systems fail silently

A flat pendant battery, a receiver knocked off channel, or an under-desk button whose cable was cut during a fitout does not report itself. The fault surfaces at the moment someone presses it. That is why a duress system is a maintenance commitment as much as an installation.

Why testing is scheduled per device, not per room

Estates are rarely uniform. A single campus commonly runs hardwired input modules, PoE duress points and under-desk buttons on one head end, and each type fails differently. On the health service sites we maintain, every device is tested to a written schedule and the result is recorded against the device ID rather than the room — so a missed device shows up in the record instead of disappearing into a ward-level tick.

What a duress alarm system costs

Pricing depends on the number of call points, whether wearable devices are included, and how deeply the system integrates with your existing nurse call, access control or RTLS infrastructure. We provide a free on-site assessment and a written, itemised quote so there are no surprises.

Built to integrate, not duplicate

Rather than installing a duress system that sits apart from everything else, we design around what you already have — routing alerts through existing nurse call infrastructure and escalation paths wherever possible, so staff and administrators aren't managing multiple disconnected systems.