How IoT dash buttons are helping doctors and patients connect at the IFEMA field hospital

Healthcare workers all over the world are putting their lives on the line to look after patients and protect us.

In many countries, field hospitals are being set-up, often in very large venues, like the Nightingale hospital at the Excel conference centre in London.

To increase the capacity of their intensive care units, Madrid has transformed the IFEMA trade ground in a field hospital with 5,500 hospital beds and 500 intensive care beds.

Connectivity there is essential, especially during a time when the situation of patients can change rapidly. Due to the speed required to be operational, however, cabling all the beds at IFEMA would have been impossible.

In addition, due to the size of the grounds, nursing stations can be tens if not a hundred metres away from some beds.

Care at the click of a button

Partnering with Asintec and Sayme, Vodafone Business has provided a NB-IoT dash clicker to be used as a “nurse button” for every bed in the field hospital.

Dash buttons, like the ones Amazon started offering customers in 2015 to make it easier to re-order items, have the function to trigger and alert or transfer basic information.

When combined with a network technology like NB-IoT, however, they become extremely powerful as these alerts are triggered instantaneously.

In addition, a cloud platform has been installed to manage the calls and several tablets for the nurses to be able to use on the go.

These mobile nursing stations show who needs immediate assistance so the nurses can provide care when and where it is required in a much more efficient way.

500 buttons were deployed in the first 48 hours and 1,600 have been deployed in total.

We are incredibly proud of the work our team in Spain has done to improve patient safety and make healthcare workers’ lives a bit easier during this crisis.

To learn more about the IFEMA hospital and how we are working with them, watch the video below.

 

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