Richard:

The priority encoder is probably not a good idea here. If the room receiver generates just a pulse then it is possible that two rooms may produce a detection at the same time or near the same time. As such the priority encoder would grant output for the patient in the room wired to the higher priority input. The lower priority pulse would be "eaten up". And if the lower one was ending just shortly after the higher priority one the encoder would produce an attenuated duration at the lower priority code output.

Best to simply run all ten broadside into a microcontroller and do parallel detection on them.

Michael Karas