A London hospital is working with British Telecom and Pennsylvania-based Microshare to harness the IoT to improve quality of care.

The Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability (RHN) in Putney has enlisted BT and Microshare to introduce smart IoT to help automate routine tasks so staff can spend more time with patients and residents, and to reduce energy costs. The hospital says the technology has proved extremely beneficial as pressure on staff has increased during the coronavirus pandemic.

The 240-bed site is a charity-run hospital offering long-term care to people with complex neurological disabilities caused by damage to the brain or other parts of the nervous system. Many procedural tasks staff carry out daily are time consuming and require manual recording to ensure compliance. However, thanks to the technology deployed at the hospital, this is largely now monitored automatically, freeing up staff so they can focus on caring for patients.

The smart technology involves IoT sensors in rooms and on equipment to monitor room occupancy and temperature, as well as asset tracking of objects such as wheelchairs, and temperature monitoring of fridges storing medicine.

Rather than staff having to check the temperature of the fridges manually, they are now equipped with automated alarms that will indicate if there is a problem requiring attention. The monitoring of water tanks inside the hospital is also now completely automated. Previously, staff would need to access the roof of the building to take temperature recordings of one of the water tanks inside the hospital – a task that may have taken an entire day. Now, thanks to the smart network, this is all done remotely and recorded on the system.

Water tanks are monitored primarily for legionella bacteria compliance testing. Thanks to smart IoT, the hospital can receive more frequent readings providing better monitoring and freeing up staff who no longer have to carry out physical checks. The hospital has four tanks on site, which were previously checked every month.

Hospital leaders say room monitoring has provided cost savings as the data have proved they did not require anther meeting space, which would have brought challenges in re-allocating another location in an older building where space is paramount.

BT is providing the secure wireless network at the hospital, which enables the smart IoT sensors to relay information using LoRaWan technology. Devices connected to a LoRaWan use little power, giving them a long battery life and making them a low-cost, long-range option for IoT applications.

The hospital uses a combination of IoT sensors, LoRaWan connectivity and data management. BT provided the infrastructure and expertise in deploying the LoRaWan gateway, which has been installed on the roof, and the cloud-based network management tools to secure the devices and infrastructure. Microshare sourced the smart IoT sensors, connected them to its Microsoft Azure cloud and integrated them into the RHN’s infrastructure.

“The new IoT system is part of a major drive towards digital transformation at the hospital,” said Toby Roberts, CIO of the RHN. “Five years ago, the hospital was mostly a paper based organisation with very little use of computers and networks.”

However, he said over the past few years the hospital had introduced more digital technology to make tasks simpler and easier. For example, whereas nurses used to take observations and record patient details on a clipboard, this is now done on an iPad and automatically fed into the secure network.

“Thanks to BT and Microshare, we are now able to automate many tasks that would have previously taken considerable time or effort to carry out,” said Roberts. “If a nurse wants to find out where a wheelchair or ECG machine is, they can simply log onto the computer and find out where in the hospital it is located. Something that may have taken an hour or more in the past is now done in seconds.”

He said the technology had been “extremely useful” during the current pandemic as it had allowed staff to perform more efficiently under heightened pressures.

“Instead of spending time filling out paper forms, they’re able to do it at the click of a button,” he said.

Chris Sims from BT added: “At a time when our healthcare sector has faced unprecedented challenges due to Covid-19, it’s amazing to see how this hospital has embraced the latest technology to make a difference for staff and patients. It shows how technology can be a huge enabler and a force for good. We’re helping communities and organisations such as RHN to make the best of the opportunities which these novel technologies can offer.”

The network at the hospital allows blanket connectivity for hundreds of devices across the building, from the basement to the upper floors. In fact, its range is so impressive, the signal reaches as far as Paddington 12km away.

“One of the keys to success for us is knowing that the project had positive and measurable impact quickly on patient care and on some of the stresses staff experience in carrying out rote tasks better suited to real-time monitoring,” said Charles Paumelle, co-founder and managing director of Microshare. “This can lead to huge productivity and safety gains, and all without ever interacting with the sensitive patient data that may exist in a hospital’s own network. Success in IoT is all about partnerships and this was demonstrated here with RHN, Microshare and BT all working together to make this happen.” The RHN is a charity, independent from the NHS but working closely with it, to provide care for people living with neuro-disability. The hospital relies on public donations to provide some of its services.