Tackling COVID and beyond: how smart technology can help hospitals
The COVID-19 outbreak has put major pressure on Europe’s healthcare providers. But it’s also accelerating their adoption of digital technologies to cope with surging demand. As hospitals and GP surgeries steel themselves for another wave of infections, they must also clear a large backlog of cases from patients who may have delayed trips for fear of becoming infected. Fortunately, connected technology solutions are emerging to help support more efficient healthcare and reduce infections.
What happens next?
Healthcare organizations (HCOs) across Europe are waking up to the possibilities afforded by smart technologies and systems such as:
Telehealth. Broadly speaking, this refers to a range of technologies that facilitate long-distance interaction between patients and healthcare professionals. This could be anything from a FaceTime-based consultation to major surgery carried out or supervised from a remote site. Government lockdowns have forced many people on to platforms like Zoom and Teams to keep in touch with friends and family and for work-related meetings. This familiarity with the technology means many patients will be more comfortable with remote consultations than before.
The benefits of such systems are clear: patients can be seen faster without the need for as much manual administrative work. This could go a long way to help managing the potentially large influx of patients who have thus far stayed away from hospitals. In the Netherlands, reports suggest over 290,000 appointments related to non-COVID cases were cancelled. Some hospitals expect to ramp up their use of telehealth systems to clear the backlog.
Fever screening is another key area where smart technology can help. Currently hospitals often have reception areas where prospective inpatients are scanned manually by staff and/or have to fill out paperwork. However, installing heat sensitive cameras in reception kiosk will enable HCOs do all of this automatically. Some cameras can even detect the user’s heartbeat for an extra level of screening. Ultimately, this will streamline admissions while protecting receptionists and other patients inside from infection. It is more efficient, reducing costs, and frees-up staff to focus on other tasks.
Dynamic wayfinding technology could be leveraged to reduce infection risks and enforce social distancing rules. How? By monitoring in real-time human congestion throughout a hospital, smart information kiosks can recommend routes that are less busy, ensuring visitors and patients stay spaced apart. This could be combined with data from queueing applications, so that if a particular waiting room is too full, a patient is directed to another waiting area. All of this information can be downloaded to the individual’s smartphone by scanning a QR code.
A new way forward
?There’s no underestimating the terrible toll that the pandemic has had and continues to have on society. But from challenging times such as these can come something positive. For healthcare providers, the types of solution outlined above could become invaluable tools to cope not just with the problems of today, but the challenges of tomorrow.
Advantech is working with its co-creation partners on these and many other solutions to help HCOs weather the current COVID-19 storm and tackle longer term trends to improve clinician productivity and patient outcomes.
In the next post, we’ll see how smart technology is already having a major impact.
About Advantech
Advantech has the corporate vision to "Enable an Intelligent Planet". The company is a global leader in the fields of IoT intelligent systems and embedded platforms. To embrace the trends of IoT, big data, and artificial intelligence, Advantech promotes IoT hardware and software solutions with the Edge Intelligence WISE-PaaS core to assist business partners and clients in connecting their industrial chains. Advantech is also working with business partners to co-create business ecosystems that accelerate the goal of industrial intelligence. (www.advantech.com)