Described herein is a patient monitoring system with image capture functionality, wherein the system is configured such that image data is recorded in response to the sensor signal only if that sensor signal is generated more than a predefined period of time following the identification of a predefined access token. Also described are methods for operating such a system, and.computer software/hardware configured to enable the operation and/or configuration of such a system. The embodiments described herein are designed in particular, to assist in protecting a patient against unauthorized persons attempting to interfere with the patient. However it has other management functions such as analyzing fall risk likelihoods, observing patient behavior, improving staff response times, statistical analysis, and ascertaining false alarms.