HEALTHCARE & HOSPITAL FACILITIES WHAT USE IS TECH?
Liam Mynes from Tork manufacturer Essity, looks at how technology is being used to improve patient outcomes in healthcare – and considers the many ways in which digital solutions can also help to enhance cleaning and hygiene protocols.
Hospitals are all about caring. Doctors and nurses spend their days interacting with patients, tending to their wounds and coming up with strategies to cure their illnesses.
In other words, the healthcare worker’s role is very much ‘hands-on’. But our hands are a potential source of infection, and this became a particular problem during the height of the global pandemic. So medical worker have faced huge challenges over the past two years. How could they maintain high standards of care for their burgeoning numbers of patients, while also keeping those same patients safe?
Technology has been pivotal in helping to achieve this. Diagnoses via video link were more or less unheard of before the pandemic, but these are now becoming the rule rather than the exception.
With the aid of Zoom and similar platforms, GPs and hospital doctors have been able to hold virtual appointments with large numbers of patients during lockdowns. While discussing symptoms and viewing abnormalities on screen is arguably less satisfactory than conducting face-to-face visits, technology has facilitated consultations that would otherwise have been impossible to hold due to Covid rules.
Meanwhile, Zoom ‘visits’ have also helped to improve the wellbeing of in-patients when real-life visitors were barred from hospital wards.
However, not all patient interactions are achievable via video link. Tests need to be made, samples need to be taken - and medical students need to undergo practical training if they are going to be able to treat real-life patients.
Scientists around the world have therefore been coming up with innovative new systems purpose-designed to facilitate healthcare and training during the pandemic.
For example, a remote-control robot capable of drawing blood, carrying out X-rays and testing patients for Covid-19 has been developed in Egypt. Named Cira-03, this robot features a chest-screen on which the patient’s results are displayed.
Meanwhile, a robot dog named Spot has been making vital checks on patients in US hospitals. The ‘dog’ is able to take a patient’s pulse and temperature readings while allowing doctors to speak with their patients via a tablet mounted on the robot dog’s ‘face’.
And medical training has also become increasingly high- tech. Students need to be able to learn by examining real- life patients, but this scenario was posing too many risks at the height of Covid-19.
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As a result, a company called GIGXR came up with a 3D learning tool that allows students to examine and diagnose holographic representations of people. These virtual patients are beamed into the students’ rooms via the HoloPatient platform. Students are then able to assess, diagnose and treat these patients while communicating with their instructor via the internet.
Not all healthcare technological breakthroughs are related to Covid, of course. For example, recent research published in the Annals of Oncology reveals that skin cancers can now be diagnosed more accurately with a computer than using the naked eye. A computer primed with images of skin cancers has managed to achieve a 95% diagnoses detection rate in trials compared with a human detection rate of just 87%.
And scientists have also come up with a ‘smart pill’ that records when it has been taken by the patient. Each pill contains a tiny sensor that sends information when ingested to a patch worn by the patient. This is then sent to a smartphone, enabling doctors or carers to ensure that the right dose is being administered at the right time.
It is not only medical treatment and diagnoses that are benefiting from technological breakthroughs. Cleaning and hygiene outcomes in healthcare are also being facilitated by technology.
Hand hygiene is extremely important in hospitals for staff members, patients and visitors. And technology is being used to ensure that hand hygiene products are always available when and where they are needed.
For example, Tork Vision Cleaning uses people-counters and connected washroom dispensers to provide healthcare cleaning teams with an overview on which dispensers are running low of soap or paper. This allows cleaners to stay ahead of the game and anticipate situations in which extra refill checks might be required.
It is not sufficient to simply supply the correct hand hygiene products for the task, however. Staff should also receive clear instructions on how and when to use them for optimum effectiveness – and here again, technological solutions are coming to the fore.
Essity’s own Tork Clean Hands Training module invites users into a digital world where they are confronted with a series of scenarios in which hand hygiene needs to be carried out. Developed in collaboration with behavioural scientists and hand hygiene experts, the course aims to provide hand hygiene guidance in an engaging way.
Healthcare cleaning is also being enhanced by technology, with robot cleaning machines increasingly being deployed
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