About ATM420: Smart, reliable pressure monitoring by Hitma

Accurate measurement was only part of the answer

More than ten years ago, Hitma kept receiving similar questions from customers.

Existing instruments could accurately measure room pressure, but the information was often presented primarily for technical users. A value such as 7.5 Pascal may tell an engineer exactly what is happening. For someone actually working in the room, the question is often much simpler:

Is the pressure condition correct, or does something require attention?

Customers were looking for a compact and reliable solution that combined accurate pressure monitoring with a status that could be understood immediately. There was no existing product that matched those requirements closely enough. So Hitma decided to develop the solution around the application.

Designed from the user's point of view

The basic idea was simple: translate a technical measurement into information that is immediately useful.

The ATM receives a digital pressure value from a transmitter and compares it with predefined limits. When the pressure remains within the required range, the display clearly shows that conditions are correct. When the pressure moves outside those limits, the status changes accordingly. Making that principle work in real-life applications, however, required much more than simply changing the colour of a screen.

Different projects introduced different requirements. How long should a pressure deviation be allowed before an alarm is triggered? Should users be able to acknowledge an alarm? What happens when conditions return to normal? How should multiple measurements or information from other systems be displayed? These questions gradually shaped the software behind the ATM.

Rather than forcing every project into one fixed configuration, flexibility became an important part of the solution.

Developed through real applications

A major step in the development came when Radboud university medical center contacted Hitma after seeing an early version of the concept. At that point, the solution was still under development.

Instead of waiting until every detail had been finalised, the project became an opportunity to develop the ATM in a real application. Requirements from the field helped shape the first version and provided the foundation for further development. Around 2015, this became the official starting point of the ATM as a Hitma solution.

Since then, practical customer requirements have continued to influence the product. New functions, interfaces and configurations have been added over the years, eventually resulting in today's ATM420.

One principle, very different applications

The ATM420 became particularly well known through pressure monitoring in hospitals and isolation rooms, but the underlying principle is much broader. One unusual application illustrates that particularly well. An ATM was installed at a facility where drugs are provided and consumed under supervision. Employees work behind a dispensing point, while drugs are used in an adjoining supervised area. The employees' workspace is maintained at positive pressure to prevent air from the adjoining area from flowing towards them.

The installer's question was very practical: How can employees immediately see whether that pressure difference is still being maintained?

An ATM was used to make the pressure status directly visible. The setting is very different from the applications for which the product was originally developed, but the underlying requirement is exactly the same: monitor the pressure reliably and make the result immediately understandable to the people using the space. That ability to adapt the solution to the application remains one of the strengths of the ATM420 today.

From a Dutch solution to international demand

For many years, the ATM developed primarily through projects in the Netherlands and the wider Benelux market. Over time, however, it became clear that the need behind the product was not limited to this region.

In 2025, Hitma started introducing the ATM420 to distributors in other European countries. The response showed that pressure monitoring professionals elsewhere were facing many of the same challenges. International projects followed, including applications in Italy, Germany and France.

That growing interest also created a new question: how could the ATM420 be made more accessible to customers, engineers and distributors outside the Benelux?

Why RoomPressureMonitor.eu was created

That is where RoomPressureMonitor.eu comes in. Within the Benelux, customers continue to work directly with Hitma, where the ATM420 was originally developed and where the product knowledge has been built up over more than a decade. For markets outside the Benelux, RoomPressureMonitor.eu was created as the dedicated international platform for the ATM420. The aim is to make it easier for international customers and distribution partners to discover the solution, understand its possibilities and get in touch about their specific application.

The platform may be international, but the product behind it remains the same: the ATM420 developed by Hitma and assembled and programmed in the Netherlands. In that sense, Room Pressure Monitor is not a separate alternative to Hitma. It is the next step in the same story. A solution that started with recurring questions from Dutch customers is now being made available to pressure monitoring professionals far beyond the market in which it was originally developed.

Built around the application

More than ten years after the first development work, the philosophy behind the ATM420 has remained remarkably consistent. Every application starts with the same question: What does the person using the room need to know? The answer may differ from project to project. That is precisely why the ATM420 was developed to be flexible.

For customers in the Benelux, the Hitma team is available directly. For applications outside the Benelux, Room Pressure Monitor provides the international route to the same expertise and solution.

Why we built the ATM420