Can IoT improve the hospital patient experience?

#Discussion(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Is automation a problem accelerator?
Thoughtonomy reports that automation often has negative consequences, acting as a problem accelerator and complexity multiplier. Why? Application development is too hasty too often, with scant attention to details like standards, accreditation and verification, says Thoughtonomy CTO, Danny Major.

We should bear his warning in mind when coding the IoT apps that health services could definitely use.

Recent hospital experience
I propose these apps after 10 days spent on trolleys, beds and operating tables at Croydon University Hospital. The day to day operations of the UK’s National Health Service are probably typical of every health service across the globe. This was confirmed by the diversity of nationalities I found myself looking up to. I love chatting with doctors, nurses and anaesthetists (as that’s what four of my family were) so I quizzed them keenly right until the morphine kicked in.

Automation could definitely improve the patient environments that nurses are too over-worked to monitor. UK patients often get hastily positioned directly under glaring lights, in extreme temperatures, while 12 monitors go BING at full volume in a disjointed rhythm that even a jazz fan would hate. If only someone could place sensors to monitor temperature, moisture, sound and light. These could alert the nurses if the patient is unwittingly being subject to sensory torture.

The biggest source of hell is other patients. Some patients and their visitors use hospitals like a playground. They seriously impede the nurses. Then I had a crack addict in the bed next door, with a massive sense of expectation. He aggressively asserted his right to heroin substitute, pronto, or he was going to buy his own! Nobody judged him for condition, nor his convictions for theft to fund his aspirations (he brazenly broadcast all this via endless shouty mobile phone messages) but it does make other patients wary about sleeping.

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