Canopy Is Redefining Hospital Worker Safety as Violence Against Healthcare Staff Surges Nationwide

Workplace violence in healthcare has reached crisis levels in the United States, a reality that is reshaping how hospitals think about safety, staffing, retention  and patient care. Healthcare workers are five times more likely to experience violence than professionals in any other sector. Nearly half of all nurses will face physical violence during their careers, in a workforce that is approximately 80% women. From emergency departments to maternity wards, the risks are pervasive and growing.

Amid this escalating challenge, Canopy, the leader in Connected Safety Platforms, has become essential infrastructure for modern health systems. Founded in 2019 and now protecting more than 300,000 healthcare workers across 50+ major hospital systems, Canopy has emerged as the most comprehensive, clinically aligned safety platform in the industry, combining wearable technology, smart alerting, real-time location intelligence and actionable insights into one seamless ecosystem.

The Hidden Crisis Inside American Hospitals

A 2023 survey by the International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) found that disorderly conduct is the most common threat to healthcare workers, followed by physical assault. Violence is not confined to inner cities, it escalates in suburban and rural hospitals just as frequently.

According to a paper published in Annals of Medicine and Surgery, violence intensifies during crises, emergencies or situations involving emotional volatility. Family members experiencing “panic, shock, uncertainty or fear” often direct their frustration toward clinical staff. Nurses, paramedics, emergency personnel and inpatient care teams are the most vulnerable.

As Canopy Co-Founder and CEO Shan Sinha explains: “Healthcare workers encounter aggression every single day. Patient advocates and family members are becoming verbally and sometimes physically, confrontational. This isn’t isolated to one region or hospital type. The escalation we saw after the pandemic simply hasn’t gone away.”

The consequences are sweeping: burnout, retention challenges, emotional fatigue and compromised patient care.

The Connected Safety Platform Built for Modern Healthcare

Canopy offers a unified safety infrastructure that hospitals have historically lacked. Unlike panic buttons or legacy nurse call systems, the platform is end-to-end: it protects staff, orchestrates responses, tracks patterns and strengthens hospital operations.

• Canopy Protect: A discreet wearable alert device that lets staff call for help instantly, with precise room-level location tracking.
• Canopy Go: Mobile protection for off-unit staff, ensuring safety beyond fixed clinical areas.
• Canopy Find: Real-time tracking for staff wearables and hospital assets, improving operational efficiency.
• Canopy Track: Analytics that help hospitals identify high-risk areas, understand incident patterns and prevent future events.

The platform connects every clinical, security and operational team member in seconds, something no traditional system has been able to do at scale.

How Canopy Works in Real-Life Incidents ?

One of the most compelling examples comes from Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, where Canopy is widely deployed. When a nurse activated their discreet safety button during a high-tension encounter, nearby staff immediately received an alert. Multiple team members rushed to support them, including physicians.

According to Sinha, “When the physician appeared, the patient calmed almost instantly. The nurse felt supported, the situation diffused, and what could have escalated into violence turned into a coordinated moment of teamwork.” This “team response effect” is one of Canopy’s most powerful impacts:

• Staff feel safer
• Physicians feel connected to clinical realities
• Patients de-escalate more quickly
• Morale strengthens
• Burnout decreases

Simply put, Canopy helps hospitals build a culture of mutual support.

Built Through Deep, Real-World Collaboration with Health Systems

Unlike many healthtech tools built in isolation, Canopy was co-developed inside leading hospitals. Systems such as Thomas Jefferson University played a key role in shaping the product’s functionality, deployment workflows and user experience. This collaboration-driven model ensures rapid and seamless implementation, high staff adoption, configurations aligned with clinical workflow, measurable improvements in incident response and a safety program that feels natural, not imposed.

Today, Canopy’s customers span leading “trailblazer” health systems, organizations that prioritize staff protection as a prerequisite for high-quality patient care. These systems often report stronger retention and higher staff morale after deployment.

A New Standard for Hospital Safety

As hospitals struggle with rising aggression, staffing shortages and operational tensions, safety infrastructure is becoming as essential as EHRs and nurse communication platforms. Canopy is positioning itself as the foundational layer that ties these systems together, ensuring every staff member, from nurses to environmental workers to patient access teams, has reliable protection.

When healthcare workers feel safe, their ability to care improves. Retention rises. Patient outcomes strengthen. Entire care teams function with greater confidence.

Canopy is becoming a system-wide safety requirement for the future of healthcare and not just another healthtech platform!

Canopy represents a rare category-defining innovation in healthcare, a platform solving a problem so urgent and so widespread that adoption feels inevitable. While the healthtech landscape is crowded with administrative and clinical tools, very few companies address the foundational human need of feeling safe at work. Canopy’s blend of hardware, software, real-time intelligence and hospital partnerships places it in a unique position to shape the next decade of hospital safety standards.

If current momentum continues, Canopy may become to workplace safety what Epic became to electronic records: the default system hospitals rely on.