As the coronavirus pandemic continues, the NHS is erecting Nightingale hospitals across the UK in order to cope with the influx of patients.
The first of these seven new hospitals was opened in London earlier this month at the ExCel Centre with the capacity to look after 4,000 patients in the new state-of-the-art facility. A combination of NHS staff, contractors and up to 200 military personnel constructed the hospital in only nine days.
From creating connected beds, to a new 111 telephone system dedicated for the hospital and food delivery apps, here’s a look at the tech behind the NHS Nightingale London.
Communication is key
When building the hospital, allowing all the different groups and partners to communicate with one another was key. This is where Cisco came in: the tech conglomerate’s WebEx video conferencing platform was instrumental in helping co-ordinate the collaboration between all the different entities to get the facility built. The platform is end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) -- this means everything on the platform, from video calls to shared documents, are all encoded so only the person sending the message and the one receiving it can see what it says. If anyone else tried to look at it, they would only see a garbled mess and letters.
“The new hospital is an extraordinary example of teamwork, the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” Cisco UK and Ireland CEO David Meads told the Standard. “The collaboration that’s been going on, with volunteers, the NHS, contractors, the armed services and our own teams as well.”
Cisco wasn’t the only company involved with the communications side of things. Vodafone was called on to increase the capacity and reach of its network at the newly established hospital, as well as the other Nightingale facilities being set up across the country, in order to keep NHS staff and patients connected.
The company has also set up a dedicated 111-style telephone system at the hospital in order to direct calls across the facility more easily. “Vodafone is here to support the NHS in any way we can and keep the UK connected,” said chief executive Nick Jefferey.
A new connected hospital
The aim for the new London Nightingale Hospital was to create a completely connected hospital.
According to Meads, normally this would take many months to achieve but the Cisco team was tasked with achieving this in seven days in order to be ready for the first 500 beds.
As a result, every bed in the hospital is connected to Wi-Fi, so patients can be treated either in-person or via video calls. “This means you can provide patient care at the bedside, at the nursing stations, or even back at the Barts NHS Trust itself. It’s a fully connected, medical-grade IT infrastructure in just seven days,” says Meads.
Taking it national
The blueprint Cisco created for the London hospital with NHSX, the health service’s innovation arm, is now going to be used for the other Nightingale hospitals which are being set up in places such as Sunderland and Exeter. “The same design and same solution allows us to make sure we have the equipment available and the skills available to support these other facilities.”
Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-commerce giant’s cloud platform, is also working alongside NHSX to support the national response to Covid-19. AWS is helping to launch a secure Covid-19 response platform for critical public services by providing the underlying infrastructure tech that will enable the NHS to aggregate information across the health service as well as other partner organisations.
The idea is that this new response platform will be able to offer more visibility on things such as occupancy levels at specific hospitals, and the capacity and waiting times at A&E departments in order to help coordinate how the nation responds to tackling the virus.
AWS stated: “This information will lead to a better understanding of how coronavirus is spreading, when and where the healthcare system will face the most strain, and which interventions are proving more effective than others in helping to mitigate the crisis — helping the NHS to decide where best to allocate resources.”
Supporting the staff
All the doctors, nurses and staff working in the new hospital need support too during the pandemic. Tech companies are working together to ensure they can get the food supplies they need in particular.
Salesforce has created a new app named Pop-Ups for Heroes alongside Ocado and Fresh Direct which aims to help NHS staff get the food essentials they need to the hospital where they work. Using this app, hospital workers can purchase and collect pre-packaged boxes containing enough food to feed a family of four for two days for £30. Currently being trialled at the NHS Lister Hospital in Stevenage, there are plans to launch subsequent pop-ups at 40 NHS hospitals, include Nightingale if it’s successful.
“Given the sacrifice that doctors, nurses and other NHS workers are making for us, we wanted to do what we can to help them get the essentials they need,” said Paul Smith, executive VP and general manager of Salesforce UK and Ireland.
Over the past two weeks, Deliveroo has raised over £1.5 million from customer donations and corporate funding to deliver free meals to NHS hospitals across London, including at the new Nightingale hospital, using its Deliveroo for Business services. Staff at hospitals across the city have received meals from the likes of Dishoom, Itsu, Leon and Pizza Hut.
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"Deliveroo is working hard to provide NHS workers with free meals and we are incredibly proud to do so. This is just a small gesture of thanks for the enormous effort they are all making to save lives and protect us all," said CEO and founder Will Shu.
