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Using 5G against Covid in Finland
The corona robot helped nurses and doctors interact with patients at the Helsinki University Hospital.
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Several ongoing projects focus on 5G in healthcare in the Nordic and Baltic countries. This map shows the initiatives in the region. Tap on the dots to learn more about each project.
In this storymap we will introduce one of these projects: The example of the corona robot at the Helsinki University Hospital
Since its outbreak in 2020, Covid has been a significant global health challenge. Its highly infectious character forced communities to keep safety distances and avoid interaction between individuals.
Hospitals and treatment of patients infected with Covid were no exception, and ensuring safety for healthcare personnel while treating Covid patients was a big challenge.
The Helsinki University Hospital and Elisa in Finland collaborated at the beginning of the pandemic to solve the issue.
HUS teamed up with Elisa and OhmniLab and developed a video robot on the Covid Ward to help nurses and doctors interact with patients.
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The robot (see image) is equipped with a high-resolution screen and audio devices to allow video calls between patients and nurses. In addition, nurses outside the ward can manage the robot with a tablet and consult patients' status. Pekka Kahri, Technology Officer at Helsinki University Hospital, acknowledges that:
The outcomes were really promising. 5G enabled high qualitiy in image and sound.
The project
When Covid broke out in 2020, it became the highest priority for all healthcare systems worldwide. The massive number of cases flooded hospitals with infected patients that required special health measures to avoid spreading the disease.
This unprecedented pandemic forced hospitals to devote entire wards to treating Covid patients, and the Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) was no exception.
At HUS, they simultaneously equipped wards to accommodate 8 to 12 Covid patients. Although an effective solution to optimize space, patient-nurse interaction was constant. In practice, nurses had to come in and out of the ward constantly, and they would need to use personal protective equipment (PPE) every time.
This equipment takes time to put on, is heavy, and needs to be treated as infectious once used - raising several concerns on the worsening of the already significant problem of medical waste seen to sustainability goals. Therefore, reducing the interactions while maintaining patients' health was a priority, but how to achieve this?
Enablers
Identifying these challenges brings the opportunity to overcome them. In this regard, keeping the motivation, the interaction, and the training with the healthcare professional is essential to achieve significant technological advances.
Moreover, the partnership between Elisa and HUS developed to tackle Covid and not for a business model. According to Pekka Kahri, that is one of the critical elements of the success of the corona robot.
The most important learning is how healthcare needs and technology can provide better patient solutions.
Use cases that are developed outside the clinic, without real understanding of the environment just risk not to fly. Technology should be meeting these real use cases and it should understand the diseases, the clinical level, and the personnel.
Challenges
Nonetheless, some challenges remain unsolved when bridging technology and healthcare needs. As Pekka Kahri puts it:
All emerging technologies (including 5G) can be interesting (...) but technology is not the part that makes hospitals interested.
Novel technologies, such as 5G, might not be mature enough. For example, some improvement is necessary for bandwidth and network slicing, which are critical for the healthcare sector where real-time applications are vital.
Another challenge is that healthcare professionals need familiarization with the new opportunities brought by 5G. These professionals are experts in healthcare provision but not necessarily in new technologies. Therefore, training and experience are required for technology to serve their needs.
We, technology experts, cannot come in, explain how it works, train the doctors and nurses, and then expect it to run smoothly (...). It requires to be side by side with them and always come back to the original motivation while they are doing it.