OPTICS for Healthcare Was Built for This Exact Moment in Time

What This Week's News Confirms

Each week, Kim and I spend time together reviewing the articles posted by the OPTICS team in the OPTICS Newsroom (www.OPTICSHC.com/news). This week we came away with a renewed sense of urgency and confirmation that we're building exactly what healthcare organizations need right now. The trends are unmistakable: workplace violence in healthcare isn't just persisting, it's escalating. But here's what gives us confidence: OPTICS was designed from the ground up to address precisely the challenges these articles highlight.

The Regulatory Landscape Is Shifting Fast

Washington State's updated workplace violence prevention law exemplifies where the entire country is heading. Healthcare employers now face requirements for detailed incident investigations, quarterly summary reports with trend analysis, and annual prevention plan updates that are based on data analysis. This isn't about checking boxes anymore; it's about demonstrating systematic accountability.

OPTICS was built for this moment. Our platform doesn't just help organizations comply with these requirements—it makes compliance efficient, actionable, and meaningful. The AI-driven analytics automatically identify patterns and urgent conditions, compliance issues, and multiple factors that impact worker safety and organizational risk. So when regulations require analysis of systemic causes and trends, OPTICS generates those insights based on real-time, current operational assessment data, not outdated assumptions or static reports.

The Data Paints a Sobering Picture

Recent survey data shows that 30% of U.S. employees witnessed workplace violence in 2025, with healthcare workers reporting exposure rates much higher than other industries. We also know that healthcare workers are much less likely to report incidents, due to multiple factors. As we reviewed these numbers, Kim and I weren't surprised—she's been sounding the alarm on these concerns for years.

Traditional workplace violence programs are typically designed to be reactive. Help gets activated after escalation hits a boiling point. Operational changes are seldom or poorly implemented after incidents are reported. Workplace violence policies, prevention plans, and training plans are not “living” documents. They are often only updated annually, and too many of them don’t reflect trends that are emerging on the frontline. 

Healthcare organizations may “check the box” to meet regulatory requirements, but do their published policies and plans actually solve their current problems? What is often missing is a method for taking action to operationalize their “post policy and plan strategies.”

Early in the development of OPTICS, Kim and I asked ourselves some questions around this very thing:

1. Are the policies and plans of healthcare organizations dynamic? How often are they designed to be updated?

2. Is there a system in place to make things actionable? It’s one thing to know there is a problem and have a plan in place to address it, but how does that plan work in practice? Are people tasked to follow up on it? Do they have a deadline? How is accountability monitored? Is everyone aware of the status or obstacles?

3. How can we engineer a system that keeps human-led decision making, while simultaneously respecting the time limitations and capacity constraints that make healthcare such a challenging environment while trying to keep people safe?

OPTICS fundamentally changes things by creating a continuous feedback loop between risk assessment, gap analysis, and actionable prevention planning. Because OPTICS was built as an AI-native platform, we keep humans in the loop, but allow the AI to do much of the heavy lifting that takes time and capacity.

Addressing Real-World Implementation Challenges

The Campus Safety Magazine article on healthcare security trends highlighted several critical pain points: escalating workplace violence, increases in regulatory requirements, the need for wearable duress technology integration, AI-powered threat detection, and solutions-based approaches for ongoing staffing shortages. OPTICS was intentionally designed to help address each of these from both an assessment and action plan perspective, to move beyond simply identifying these issues. Through policy and protocol development, structured risk assessments, and actionable steps to embed safety into organizational culture, OPTICS helps organizations understand where vulnerabilities exist, and then translates assessment findings into actionable intelligence to improve these critical problems. 

A Platform for Tomorrow's Requirements

California and New York have enacted comprehensive workplace violence prevention laws. Federal OSHA standards for healthcare are increasingly likely. As Kim often says, "The question isn't whether your organization will face these requirements. It's whether you'll be ready."

We built OPTICS to be that readiness solution designed to change culture, not just to satisfy compliance requirements. Through ongoing assessment, feedback loops, and trend analysis, OPTICS enables organizations to learn from real-world conditions and continuously refine policies, protocols, and prevention strategies. This adaptive approach supports early intervention, data-informed decision-making, decision velocity, alignment with new regulations and best-practices, and long-term violence reduction. As a result, prevention and safety become embedded in how the organization operates. It becomes part of the culture.

The articles in our newsroom this week confirm what we've believed from day one: healthcare organizations need a modern, AI-native platform that turns workplace violence prevention from a compliance obligation into a strategic capability. That's exactly what OPTICS delivers.

PS: This blog may feel more “promotional” than most of our previous posts. That’s intentional. While our work is grounded in education and evidence, we also recognize the importance of building awareness and gathering advocates for OPTICS for Healthcare. We want people in healthcare to be part of this important work. After reflecting on this week’s headlines of “what’s in the news,” we felt it was the right moment to share why we are so passionate about OPTICS for Healthcare and transforming safety in the healthcare industry. 

David Brake and Kim Urbanek are co-founders of OPTICS for Healthcare, an AI-native workplace violence prevention platform designed specifically for healthcare organizations.

About David Brake

DAVID is the Co-founder and CEO of OPTICS for Healthcare, an AI-first company dedicated to creating safer healthcare environments for staff, patients, and the public. The OPTICS platform was designed to revolutionize how healthcare organizations approach facility assessments, enabling them to conduct comprehensive current-state evaluations, generate detailed gap analyses, and develop customized workplace violence policies and action-specific operational playbooks.

About Kim Urbanek

KIM is a leading Workplace Violence Prevention expert with over 26 years of healthcare, security, and emergency management  experience. Kim is a nationally sought-after speaker, a #1 best-selling author, and a recognized healthcare consultant. Kim is the Co-founder and Chief of Innovation and Practice of OPTICS for Healthcare, an AI driven workplace violence risk assessment and mitigation tool, designed to reduce violence and improve operations at healthcare organizations.