4G cellular technologies accelerate treatment of COVID-19 at Nightingale Hospital
15 June 2020
To accelerate the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19 patients, Visbion partnered with Advantech and Adey Electronics to offer a fast and secure solution for sending CT scan files from mobile CT scanner units to hospitals.
This allows medical professionals to plan appropriate treatments more quickly, thereby saving lives and giving comfort to infected people.
During the early planning stages of the UK’s response to tackling emergency treatment for patients suffering with COVID-19, Visbion – a specialist in medical image acquisition, distribution, management, and display solutions – were approached to help provide the infrastructure for the screening of patient’s lungs in order to evaluate treatment strategies.
The Nightingale hospital, launched at the Excel in London on April 3, was constructed and operational in just 10 days. This meant that there were significant pressures to deliver an operational and proven lung screening solution on a very short lead-time. Encrypted transmission of scans direct from the scanning trailer within the Nightingale facilities were required for the NHS Trusts to ensure specialist reporting of the images and safe archiving.
Due to the time limitations and requirements for an extremely reliable and a highly secure method of data transmission, 4G cellular technologies were the clear choice to deliver on all technical, budgetary, and rapid deployment criteria.
Solution
Visbion Image Cube
The Visbion Image Cube product ensures scans are transferred rapidly and securely to the hospital’s systems, ready for immediate diagnosis. High-speed 4G mobile networks provide highly efficient remote support and management of the system. When the mobile unit is deployed, the image Cube automatically connects to the approved network so that it is ready to scan and send data immediately, without the need for costly fixed line fibre or Ethernet networks to be installed and avoid onsite installation delays.
Visibion used a customised hardware solution comprising an Advantech 4G router (featuring always-on connectivity providing real-time CT scan file transmission service) and a bespoke Mobile Mark dual 4G & GPS antenna, provided by Adey Electronics. This solution enabled Visibion to ensure communications were established to its screening kit immediately
The Advantech industrial dual SIM 4G Libratum router means the best mobile network is intelligently monitored and selected to provide optimum throughput, reliability, and performance – this is invaluable when connected to critical devices that need ‘always-on’ connectivity. The high-gain customised antenna provides a robust means of establishing external wireless communications to the mobile unit in a challenging and congested airspace within the busy Excel centre.
To provide full visibility and management of the solution remotely, Visbion also utilised the Advantech RSeeNet secure management platform to gain on-site visibility of the 4G performance, connectivity statistics and get notifications to manage the communications system and provide the best solution to support the frontline team to ensure seamless transmissions.
Stefan Claesen, CEO of Visbion, said “We are proud to be working to support the medical response during this crisis. We have extensive experience in this type of mobile connectivity, and we are delighted that our Image Cube managed service can help deliver benefits to the NHS, at such a key time. Our long-term partnership with Advantech channel partner Adey Electronics has been invaluable in providing a robust rapid deployment communications solution using Advantech hardware and software platforms, which provides our Image Cube instant and seamless integration to the mobile and hospital networks.”
As the Visbion Image Cube and Advantech cellular connectivity delivered such a promising performance at the London Nightingale Hospital, NHS England have decided to deploy similar systems in hospitals located in Harrogate, Birmingham, and Bristol.
In addition to continuously improving the Image Cube, Visbion, Advantech and Adey Electronics are equipping mobile medical vehicles with GPS technology. Medical equipment, such as MRI, CT, X-ray and mammography machines, installed in mobile medical vehicles are very delicate so a solution for monitoring the location, speed, and driver behaviour of these specialist vehicles is required. To meet this need for medical fleet management, Visbion’s new monitoring platform will soon be integrated with Advantech routers and management panels, which will provide each client with remote configuration functions and comprehensive location and status information for each vehicle, in a continuing effort to help hospitals fight against COVID-19 and other unknown future pandemics.
More information on this case study may be found at;
https://buy.advantech.eu/CMS/CmsDetail.aspx?CMSID=e36957c1-13ed-444f-882a-dd523d7b1678
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