2020/06/25 - The current coronavirus situation is affecting us all. Most of us have been working from home for some time, and when we do need to leave the house for essentials, we are advised to avoid contact as far as possible. But where it's impossible to totally avoid contact, the focus is on the hygiene of every single individual if we are to combat the Covid-19 virus. We are increasingly concerned with the best way to wash our hands in a bid to protect not just ourselves, but those around us. But what does hand hygiene have to do with the digitalisation so often expected in industry?
Hospitals in particular are currently facing massive challenges. They need sufficient capacity to treat people, but at the same time have to guarantee the safety of their staff and of the patients. Within the hospital setting, contact when providing treatment, with a simultaneous accumulation of risk groups and hospital viruses, is unavoidable. Hospitals need a sufficient basic supply of disinfectant dispensers. But do people use them correctly?
Our partner GWA Hygiene has developed a digital hospital hygiene assistant to this end. Flexible sensor technology allows disinfection behaviour to be recorded. Monitoring of dispenser use enables effective fill status management. This ultimately provides a message about the hygiene status in hospitals and care institutions.
umlaut AG aims to work with GWA Hygiene to adopt this approach, take the thinking to the next level, an develop additional use cases. Based on the current infrastructure of process data, a holistic approach to digitisation will be established. The implementation of further sensor technology and the recording and collation of all data on an IoT platform enables the creation of a digital twin of the wards and hospital areas. This includes use cases such as the tracking of beds, medical equipment and assets. Aspects of the automation of support processes can also be included, such as the provision of food, the logistics of consumables or secure access, and the tracking of access to medications. Within a tool and dashboard, the hygiene status can then be expanded to include forecasts of consumables, the occupancy plan by forecasting future capacity utilisation, or maintenance by means of an automated order. This enables us to present processes transparently, and forms the basis for reducing non-value-adding processes. By correlating the data recorded, analyses can simplify the hospital's operational planning at a further level.
The key aim is to reduce employee's workload, and to make healthcare sustainable in the future. The collaboration between umlaut and GWA Hygiene is enabling the vision of the hospital 4.0 to be designed, developed and delivered.
