GPS World

Tag: hospital

  • New Ubihere technology fills in for GPS indoors

    New Ubihere technology fills in for GPS indoors

    The dashboard shows how Ubihere tracks with both camera and tag technology. (Screenshot: Ohio Development Services Agency)
    The dashboard shows how Ubihere tracks with both camera and tag technology. (Screenshot: Ohio Development Services Agency)

    Ubihere has introduced a new 2D and 3D tracking technology for indoor and outdoor positioning.

    Ubihere’s patented technology provides real-time asset location and information without GPS, making it an alternative for GPS-denied environments.

    From Space Walks to Retail Stores

    The inventor of the technology is geoinformatics professor Alper Yilmaz of The Ohio State University (OSU), who researched how to geolocate undercover officers based on motion video information, as well as astronauts on space walks.

    OSU urged Yilmaz to commercialize his technology, and Rev1 Ventures served as the incubator. Ubihere launched under Rev1’s portfolio in 2016 in Columbus, Ohio.

    Ubihere’s system is based on anonymous video analysis positioning technology, which is patented from OSU, coupled with tag technology and advanced machine learning analytics. The system’s tags, cameras, and software track assets to the centimeter. The assets are monitored through an anonymous video feed or the tags themselves, which are about the size of a credit card, and non-RFID.

    The map for indoor environments can be generated from a building information model (BIM). Based on the building’s architecture, movement is tracked. In milliseconds it can hone in on an exact location within a centimeter, explained Alice Hilliard, Ubihere’s vice president of business development.

    The location data is transmitted to a server or the cloud, depending on the customer’s preference. It is then loaded into dashboards that can be accessed from any device the client requests.

    If a tagged object leaves a building, it will continue to be tracked with or without GPS. If the object stays within the building, it will never use GPS. Using GPS shortens the battery life, which ranges from 18 to 24 months. Battery life is also affected by the number of floors, temperature and usage.

    Launching in Hospitals and Retail Stores

    The tag offers a way to calibrate location in places such as hospitals, where tracking food carts or devices through lead-lined walls enables hospitals to maximize their efficiency.

    “Imagine how many times a nurse or other caregivers go back and forth,” Hilliard said. “By tracking how people and objects move around, we can help departments figure out opportunities to lay out the floor better to allow the staff to save time and steps.

    “With a blueprint loaded into the software,” Hilliard said, “the system knows whether a (tagged) IV pump went down the hall, turned left or right, entered an elevator, or was left in a patient’s room.”

    The cameras can be installed in locations such as retail stores, enabling Ubihere to anonymously track a customer’s journey. Used together, the tag and camera can help stores determine whether a display is working, showing how many customers came in to shop, or how many looked at or touched items in a particular display.

    For ecommerce, customer behavior can be tracked automatically in real time with Google Analytics and other SEO tools.

    Other possible uses include factories and emergency-response teams. “If you were in a factory or even a nuclear power plant, OSHA guidelines establish that you have to have two people in the control room at all times,” explained Hilliard.

    “Periodically, OSHA is required to monitor if the power plant is following that protocol. Instead of having someone sit there and oversee the situation, we can use our camera technology to anonymously collect workers’ whereabouts, which can then be easily pulled from the cloud. For response teams, an equipment failure that makes it difficult to locate a team member could be overcome with the tag technology. “

    Ubihere’s machine-based algorithms can learn locations based on various types of sensors, Yilmaz said, adding that detecting odors isn’t out of the question.

    The startup is now exploring potential applications of its GPS-free tracking technology. While initially focusing on beta tests in hospital and retail environments, Ubihere also has three projects with the U.S. Department of Defense.

  • Coronavirus, organ transport top medical drone uses

    Coronavirus, organ transport top medical drone uses

    With Coronavirus all over the news, it’s actually encouraging to hear that China is making high-level efforts to contain the infection: two isolation hospitals built in just one week in Wuhan where the outbreak began, travel restrictions inside China, very few people being allowed to leave the country, enforced mask-wearing, and local communities in neighboring provinces blocking visits by outsiders.

    Two drone-related stories caught my attention, both in China and connected to the virus outbreak — one where drones were being used to enforce “wear-a-mask (see video), and another where disinfectant was being dispensed by drones.

    Photo: Xag
    Photo: Xag

    It’s not exactly clear who was behind recent drone flights that broadcast live warnings to people without protective masks on the streets — some villages in rural China were apparently overflown and people were advised to wear a mask while outdoors.

    Around Beijing, similar activities were maybe down to well-intentioned social media people and traffic police.

    XAG, which has fielded 42,000 agricultural spraying drones in China, is urging authorities to use its drones for widespread disinfectant spraying, and has set up a significant fund to support these activities. The company claims its drones can disinfect a local community in less than four hours, and may already have done so.

    Medical transport drones. Staying with the medical theme, Aquiline Drones (AD) in Cincinnati is a drone company operating under a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, and is working on a system to transport human organs for transplants.

    VyrtX is an organ transport company in Ohio that has teamed with AD, with the object of creating a highway-in-the-sky across the state to overcome ground delivery delays. Apparently around 25% of precious transplant organs don’t make it in time to be used; they are lost to the patients on lengthy wait lists — and many people are dying as a consequence. There are supposedly enough donors, but organs deteriorate during ground transport and desperate transplant candidates are losing out badly.

    So the next step for VyrtX and AD are custom-designed drones for life-saving rapid transport between donor and transplant hospitals. VyrtX is working with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, the Ohio UAS Centers and four Ohio organ procurement organizations to develop the air corridor and begin rapid organ transport by drone across the state.

    The University of California, San Diego, Health (UC San Diego Health) is joining an increasing number of health organizations in developing a drone system for blood and documentation transport between its facilities. Collaborating with the UPS Flight Forward drone delivery program and with Matternet, medical payloads will travel between Moores Cancer Center and Jacobs Medical Center. The Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine, about 1.5 miles north, will be added provided initial test flights work out well.

    Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)
    Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)

    UPS Flight Forward is another company that was granted (FAA) Part 135 Air Carrier authorization and is already operating a UAS delivery program at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, N.C.. UPS Flight Forward is also planning with CVS to deliver prescriptions and other products to CVS pharmacy customers.

    Another drone medical supplies delivery system in Tanzania ran an operational trial in the fall of 2018. Wingcopter (a German drone manufacturer), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and DHL flew medicines from the mainland to an island. The DHL Parcelcopter completed a 60-km route autonomously in around 40 minutes, for a total of 2,200 km flown during the pilot project.

    Building on these earlier trials, Wingcopter is now working with Merck and the Frankfurt University of Applied Science to demonstrate a drone delivery system between two Merck facilities in Germany. The object is to show the benefits of direct drone airborne transport over trucks for moving small packages between a Merck lab in Gernsheim to its headquarters in Darmstadt.

    The first flight was recently accomplished over roughly 15.5 miles between the facilities, carrying a sample of pigments.

    Photo: Wingcopter
    Photo: Wingcopter

    The BVLOS (beyond visual line of sight) flight passed over a dense metropolitan area, power lines, railways, and roadways. Benefits include time savings of around an hour, provided much greater savings at some times, and avoided significant ground vehicle emissions.

    To sum up, drones being used to help combat coronavirus, to reduce time and costs for the transport of medical samples and supplies over medium distances, and there’s a spin-off with potential commercial promise, too. It’s a good month for the drone industry…

    Tony Murfin
    GNSS Aerospace

  • UC San Diego Health launches drone transport program with UPS, Matternet

    Drone service slated to begin February 2020, with goals of enhancing efficacy, reliability and predictability of delivering medical products between hospitals and laboratories.

    In February, the University of California (UC) San Diego Health will launch a pilot project to test the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to transport medical samples, supplies and documents between Jacobs Medical Center, Moores Cancer Center and the Center for Advanced Laboratory Medicine (CALM), speeding delivery of services and patient care currently managed through ground transport.

    Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)
    Trained professionals will load and operate the drones, which will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths and will carry no cameras. (Photo: UC San Diego Health)

    The program is a collaboration with UPS, which received in September 2019 the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Part 135 Standard certification and authorization to use unmanned aircraft systems for a drone delivery program, and Matternet, a Mountain View, California-based drone systems developer for health care institutions. This latest effort builds upon the UPS and Matternet drone project already taking place at WakeMed Health and Hospitals, a private, non-profit health care system based in Raleigh, N.C.

    “Currently, medical samples that must be transported between health care sites are carried by courier cars, which are naturally subject to the variabilities of traffic and other ground issues,” said Matthew Jenusaitis, chief administrative officer for innovation and transformation at UC San Diego Health. “With drones, we want to demonstrate proof-of-concept for getting vital samples where they need to be for testing or assessment more quickly and simply. It’s another way to leverage emerging technologies in a way that can tangibly benefit our patients.”

    The project calls for medical professionals at Jacobs Medical Center, located on the east health campus of UC San Diego in La Jolla, to pack payloads, such as blood samples or documents, into a secure container that attaches to one of Matternet’s M2 rechargeable battery-powered drones.

    The drones will follow predetermined, low-risk flight paths, initially between Jacobs Medical Center and special landing sites at Moores Cancer Center, located less than a mile away and within visual line of sight under the FAA’s Part 107 rules, and then subsequently at CALM, which is near the Jacobs Medical Center. The flights will take only minutes to complete and will be monitored by remote operators. The drones will carry no cameras.

    In May 2018, the FAA designated the city of San Diego as one of nine lead participants in the regulators’ Integration Pilot Program. UC San Diego was also approved by the FAA to test the use of drones in transporting lab specimens and pharmaceuticals throughout its health system.

    “Right now, most biological samples must travel between sites by courier car, within designated hours,” said James Killeen, MD, clinical professor of emergency medicine and director of information technology services at UC San Diego School of Medicine. “That leaves the system vulnerable to the vagaries of road congestion, accidents, construction and more. Travel time can be slow and unpredictable. A drone can fly over such obstacles in a much more direct way, and take just a few minutes to cover the same distance.”

     

  • Berg Insight: Remote Patient Monitoring to Reach €19.4B in 2018

    Berg Insight estimates that revenues for remote patient monitoring (RPM) solutions reached € 4.3 billion in 2013, including revenues from medical monitoring devices, mHealth connectivity solutions, care delivery software platforms and monitoring services. RPM revenues are expected to grow at a CAGR of 35.0 percent between 2013 and 2018, reaching € 19.4 billion at the end of the forecast period.

    The findings are discussed in the report “mHealth and Home Monitoring” (PDF brochure).

    Savings attributable to payers and care providers will by far exceed this amount as connected care solutions can allow better health outcomes to be achieved more cost efficiently. The new care models enabled by these technologies are furthermore often consistent with patients’ preferences of living more healthy, active and independent lives.

    While the healthcare industry is advancing towards an age where connected care solutions will be part of standard practices, this progress is still far from uniform. “The growth in the remote patient monitoring market is today centred on very specific market verticals and regions. Most of the market growth in the sleep therapy segment has for instance occurred in the US and France, where frequent compliance audits are becoming more common,” said Lars Kurkinen, Senior Analyst, Berg Insight.

    He added that the telehealth market benefits from local and regional project financing in several European countries, whereas remotely monitored medication dispensers gain traction among home care providers in the Benelux and Nordic countries in particular.

    In addition to this, the first pharmaceutical companies have recently initiated rollouts of connected adherence monitoring solutions that are bundled together with specific drugs. “Another high-level development that will have a major impact on the use of connected care solutions in several countries during the coming years is the shift from fee-for-service reimbursement systems to pay-for-performance structures that emphasize cost-effective delivery of quality care,” said Mr Kurkinen. In the U.S., one example of this development is the large number of RFPs for telehealth solutions that are being issued due to the hospital readmission reduction programs.