Five flagship IoT companies – Abeeway, Claranova, Everynet, Redexia and Semtech – have joined forces to help fight Covid-19 and offer innovations to healthcare staff.
 
The consortium has designed a system based on LoRaWan technology to equip hospitals with emergency buttons and save lives. This system signals patients requiring immediate intervention and allows medical personnel to locate and identify these calls in real time.
 
Everynet is providing the infrastructure network, Semtech holds the underlying IP for LoRa technology, Abeeway provides call buttons with long-life batteries, Redexia coordinates the integration and logistical deployment of the project and Claranova subsidiary MyDevices completes the system with its software platform that allows the rapid integration of the various components. The MyDevices platform collects the data and presents them in the form of an intuitive dashboard for medical personnel.
 
“Semtech is honoured to join Claranova, along with other companies to not only provide better working conditions for medical staff, but to also help the community during the pandemic,” said Marc Pegulu, vice president of IoT at Semtech.
 
Actility Group company Abeeway’s call button allows patients to report an emergency at any time. These waterproof, compact and easy-to-clean sensors include a Bluetooth scanner so users can immediately identify and locate the equipment or person concerned. They can also measure the ambient temperature and detect physical contact thanks to a built-in loudspeaker, thus providing information to healthcare staff in real time.
 
“Improving healthcare facilities operations for patients and staff is critical in an effective fight against the spread of Covid-19,” said Olivier Hersent, CEO at Actility. “With Abeeway devices communicating through LoRaWan, nurses get real-time information about a patient call for a nurse and the positioning of the patient bed. This enhances overall patient safety and medical staff efficiency and allows to save lives.”
 
These technologies already equip 750 rooms for free in hospitals in Bellvitge, San Pau, Parc Taulí, Germans Trias i Pujol and Del Mar in Barcelona and save lives. This autonomous technology allows the nursing staff to work with more responsiveness and security, thus freeing up time to concentrate on essential tasks. The consortium continues to deploy these in other hospitals and is working to extend these technologies to other key applications to combat the virus.
 
MyDevices empowers partners to provide a wide range of IoT plug-and-play options such as the nurse-call system. The IoT platform put in place is seamlessly integrated to work with the other partners’ LoRa-enabled devices and networks, allowing quick deployment of Covid-19 critical products.
 
“The rapid spread of Covid-19 has forced healthcare facilities to cope with a huge influx of patients and to adapt very quickly to very difficult conditions,” said Pierre Cesarini, CEO of Claranova. “In association with its prestigious partners, Claranova is proud to contribute to fighting this pandemic alongside healthcare staff. Call buttons make it easier for hospital staff and improve safety.”
 
Everynet has pioneered the concept of IoT digital transformation by connecting the most constrained devices at massive scale and for low cost, enabling a neutral host to build out high-quality infrastructure and leasing wholesale coverage to service providers. Redexia is an IoT connectivity operator and main partner of Everynet in Spain, where it is the main contact for the deployment of the first national LoRaWan.
 
“We are honoured and humbled that we could provide real help in such trying times and we hope our contribution will alleviate some of the burden on overloaded medical staff,” said Lawrence Latham, CEO of Everynet. “We believe that our initiative to deliver our network for free, together with the strong ecosystem of partners that we built together with Redexia, can make a difference.”