The project has addressed a critical challenge concerning the healthcare sector in Italy, both public and private. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has severely tested healthcare workers, highlighting a shortage of staff that has resulted in a significant workload burden. Despite the influx of personnel from nursing homes and new summer hires, these shortages resurfaced with the second wave of the pandemic. This has underscored the growing need for innovative technological solutions to address this issue.

The system proposed in this project serves as a response to this challenge. Firstly, it acts as an organizational and operational support for healthcare professionals, providing detailed and easily accessible information, as well as alerts in case of problems or unexpected events. To achieve this, the system first collects data on the location and status of beds. In addition to bed data collection, the system includes patient health data, providing indicators to detect clinical emergencies or concerning conditions.

The data will be securely and privately recorded and stored in the system, enabling the creation of a patient and bed historical record in case of alarms. All data can be viewed through a web application with personalized access via usernames and passwords for caregivers.

Beds are also equipped with a bedside touchscreen interface for quick system management. From both interfaces, operators can define customized rules to monitor the status of patients and beds. In the event of a breach of any of these rules, the system will immediately alert the staff on duty through the application and the mobile app, enabling timely interventions to ensure patient safety.

In summary, the project focuses on two main aspects: meeting the needs of healthcare professionals through a participatory design approach and developing the system according to the identified guidelines, with real-world testing in hospital departments and nursing homes.

References:

Bacchin, D., Pernice, G. F. A., Pierobon, L., Zanella, E., Sardena, M., Malvestio, M., & Gamberini, L. (2022). Co-Design in Electrical Medical Beds with Caregivers. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(23), 16353.

Bacchin, D., Pernice, G. F., Sardena, M., Malvestio, M., & Gamberini, L. (2022, June). Caregivers’ Perceived Usefulness of an IoT-Based Smart Bed. In International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 247-265). Cham: Springer International Publishing.