Health Technology, Digital Healthcare
Article | September 8, 2023
© 2019 American Cranes & Transport Magazine.
Night moves
Moving over-sized, over-dimensional loads during the day is no easy task. Adding darkness and poor visibility to your trip adds numerous hazards that must be thoroughly identified and mitigated.
When planning a specialized transportation project, there are three primary objectives:
Ensure the safety of the transport crew and the general public.
Protect the integrity of the cargo and transport equipment.
Protection of Infrastructure – roads, bridges, traffic control devices, utilities and the like.
For the most part, specialized carriers perform night transports to reduce the impact on day-time commuter traffic. Route challenges – construction, road closures, lane crossovers, bridges and other obstacles – are often better solved at night. Police and utility support are often more readily available at night.
Night transport hazards include employee fatigue, slowed reaction time and poor visibility for both the transport crew and motorists. Decreased visibility increases potential for trips, falls, runovers, back overs and equipment strikes.
It can’t be emphasized enough how critically important it is to ensure that all transport crew members have had adequate rest for these projects. Workers need complete rest before the transport takes place. A fatigued worker is a danger to himself as well as his fellow crew members. And while impaired drivers can be out on the streets during the day, there is often an increased number of these drivers on roadways at night.
Limited visibility is a given when it comes to night-time transports. Limited visibility increases the chance of going off route and striking objects, and the transport driver’s maneuverability and reaction time maybe be reduced. Road conditions can abruptly change during a night-time transport. Therefore, it is critically important to know the route and to have drivers run it in advance. Statistically speaking, accident frequency increases when the transporter goes off route and attempts to correct itself. While providing the necessary lighting to make night transport is important, artificial lighting can pose visibility hazards, especially to the drivers. Other hazards may include bright work lighting that produces glare.
OSHA has identified the “Focus Four” accident events that make up the most serious injuries and fatalities in the construction business. They are also known as the “Fatal Four.” Many carriers have had employees injured in the past as a result of one of these four incidents.
Caught-in-between hazards are injuries resulting from a person being squeezed, caught, crushed, pinched or compressed between two or more objects or between parts of an object. This is also referred to as “pinch points or entrapment.” As the transporter navigates its designated route the landscape is continuously changing. It is imperative that all ground crew members maintain situational awareness and not place themselves between the moving transporter and fixed objects such as guardrails, parked vehicles, buildings, etc.
Struck-by hazards are injuries produced by forcible contact or impact between the injured person and an object or piece of equipment. There are many potential struck-by hazards. Guide wires that must be raised can snap and strike workers on the ground. Tag lines should be used to control loads. The primary purpose of using tag lines is to control the load but more importantly give the worker a safe buffer distance away from suspended and the uncontrolled movement of these loads.
Fall hazards are anything that could cause an unintended loss of balance or bodily support and result in a fall. To prevent fall hazards all workers should have either fall prevention or a means of fall protection in place. As a rule, 100 percent tie off is required when using a fall arrest system (FAS). FAS’s should be thoroughly inspected before each use.
Electrocution hazards result when a person is exposed to a lethal amount of electrical energy. Maintaining minimum approach distances (MAD) is a critical safety practice. As everyone knows, equipment does not have to physically make contact with energized equipment or lines to cause serious injuries and even death. Electrical energy can “jump” from lines into equipment that has encroached the Minimum Approach Distance based on its voltage.
As noted above, it is critically important to ensure that crew members have had adequate rest and are not fatigued. Night transports are difficult enough, and the last thing you want to introduce are tired and fatigued workers. Being fatigued creates a risk for anyone who undertakes an activity that requires concentration and a quick response.
All companies should have an “Hours Worked Policy” that clearly spells out the number of hours allowed to work before a mandatory rest period. This policy should ensure that the transport crew has had adequate rest during day, that a fatigue assessment is conducted on all team members, that crews are never allowed to work double shifts and that employees are prohibited from driving long distances to return home.
Dealing with darkness
Visibility and slowed reaction times should be a part of the project planning. A limited amount of ambient light that only projects upward and outward impedes vision and increases blind spots for drivers. Lights cast shadows, increasing the potential for slips, trips and falls.
All transport moves should establish pre-planned Emergency Action Plans. When an emergency occurs, time is of the essence and can mean the difference between life and death. If it is a long-distance move the emergency numbers and first responder information can change. Crews should know when it’s time to seek emergency “safe harbor.”
When approaching overhead obstructions such as guide wires, electrical lines, communication lines and overpasses, travel speed is of utmost importance. Again, pre-route surveys provide advance knowledge of obstructions. At night, visual identification of roadway obstructions is reduced and delayed and last second reactions to oncoming hazards can lead to accidents. Support personnel in bucket trucks also have the challenge of reduced visibility.
In darkness, overhead hazards often require more utility support for height clearances, which means the need for raising energized lines, lifting traffic control devices, trimming tree limbs, releasing tension on guide wires, removing highway signs, repositioning street lights and raising railroad crossing arms.
Traffic control can also create hazards. The general public may ignore pilot car lights at night, so it’s often advisable to also use police escorts. All support vehicles and trucks should be properly marked and equipped with strobe lights.
The configuration of the transport system can also be a hazard. Navigating sharp turns or crossovers is greatly reduced based on the length of transporter. Snake-like maneuvers of trailers pose an increased risk.
It’s important to never allow personnel to take shortcuts by walking through or under transporter while it’s in motion. Stop or have the worker go around.
Situational awareness
The transport crew must always maintain “situational awareness” to prevent being in line of fire or entrapped between moving and fixed objects.
All the equipment used in the transport must be deemed safe. You should have procedures to conduct thorough assessment of all new equipment.
Ensure machine guard devices are in place especially around moving components.
Provide secured areas using catwalks/railing system.
All steps should be designed with slip resistant material.
Ensure that all deck openings are properly protected and covered.
Components that hydraulically extend and retract should be clearly posted with DANGER signs.
Roadway conditions are always a bigger concern at night. Assess weather conditions prior to start of the project and don’t take chances. A “Go – No Go” criteria should be developed for each project. Once the decision is made to transport the load there is no turning back. Changing weather can cause the transporter to lose traction. Underpasses that are shaded during the day will likely freeze up more quickly. If the temperatures drop significantly during the move, equipment performance may be affected – especially those with hydraulics.
Because the reaction time of the transport crew is reduced, speeds are often reduced, causing potential for curfew violations. Boarding and deboarding the transporter increases risk for slips and falls. Other potential road condition hazards include grade of road, width of road, shoulder surfaces, railroad crossing clearances and bottoming out, overpasses, tight and narrow turning lanes, parked vehicles and frequent grade changes.
Crew prep is essential and should be a part of the job plan and job training. The team should be briefed each day to identify the responsibilities of all crew members. The crew should know it is empowered; everyone has the authority to stop the transport if something looks unsafe or when someone is unsure. In the event of a complication, crews should be informed of how to regroup and formulata mitigation plan. There should be an established means of communication that is limited only to transport issues. Most importantly, crew should embrace these words: When in doubt, call time out!
A Task Hazard Analysis (THA) should address all scope of work activities, identify hazards and have a mitigation plan for each, clear channels of communication, the traffic control plan and an “Emergency Preparedness Plan.” And finally: Know the route; ride the route and expect the unexpected.
Edwards-Moving_Faktor-5 (2).jpg
Edwards Moving performs a night move using it’s Goldhofer Faktor-5 transport system.
Keys to a successful night transport
Early planning and attention to detail. Anticipate roadway hazards such as guardrails, poles & hydrants that pose obstruction with travel path or turning radius.
Preparing a detailed traffic control plan.
Thorough due diligence throughout scope of work.
Established contingency plan for equipment.
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Digital Healthcare
Article | November 29, 2023
The COVID-19 virus (C19) pandemic is turning out to be the event of the century. Even World War seems timid in comparison. We are in the 4th month of the virus (in non-China countries) and have gone past the lockdown in many places. Isn’t it time we re-think the approach? What if there is another wave of C19 coming soon? What if C19 is the first of many such events in the future?
Before we get into analysis and solution design, summarizing the C19 quirks:
While a large section of the affected population is asymptomatic, for some it can be lethal
There isn’t clarity on all the ways C19 spreads
It’s known to affect the lungs, heart, and kidneys in patients with weak immunity
It has been hard to identify a definitive pattern of the virus. Some observations in managing the C19 situation are:
With no vaccine in sight, the end of this epidemic looks months or years away
Health care personnel in hospitals need additional protection to treat patients
Lockdowns lead to severe economic hardship and its repeated application can be damaging
Quarantining people has an economic cost, especially in the weaker sections of society
If one takes a step back to re-think about this, we are primarily solving 2 problems:
Minimise deaths: Minimise the death of C19 and non-C19 patients in this period
Maximise economic growth: The GDP output/growth should equal or higher than pre-C19 levels
One needs to achieve the 2 goals in an environment of rising number of C19 cases.
Minimise deaths
An approach that can be applied to achieve this is:
Data driven health care capacity planning
Build a health repository of all the citizens with details like pre-existing diseases, comorbidity, health status, etc. The repository needs to be updated quarterly to account for patient data changes
This health repository data is combined with the C19 profile (disease susceptibility) and/or other seasonal diseases to determine the healthcare capacity (medicines, doctors, etc.) needed
The healthcare capacity deficit/excess needs to be analysed in categories (beds, equipment, medicine, personnel, etc.) and regions (city, state, etc.) and actions taken accordingly
Regular capacity management will ensure patients aren’t deprived of timely treatment. In addition, such planning helps in the equitable distribution of healthcare across regions and optimising health care costs. Healthcare sector is better prepared to scale-up/down their operations
Based on the analysis citizens can be informed about their probability of needing hospitalisation on contracting C19. Citizens with a higher health risk on C19 infection should be personally trained on prevention and tips to manage the disease on occurrence
The diagram below explains the process
Mechanism to increase hospital capacity without cost escalation
Due to the nature of C19, health personnel are prone to infection and their safety is a big issue. There is also a shortage of hospitable beds available. Even non-C19 patients aren’t getting the required treatment because health personnel seek it as a risk. This resulted in, healthcare costs going up and availability reducing.
To mitigate such issues, hospital layouts may need to be altered (as shown in the diagram below). The altered layout improves hospital capacity and availability of health care personnel. It also reduces the need for the arduous C19 protection procedures. Such procedures reduce the patient treatment capacity and puts a toll on hospital management.
Over a period, the number of recovered C19 persons are going to increase significantly. We need to start tapping into their services to reduce the burden on the system. The hospitals need to be divided into 3 zones. The hospital zoning illustration shown below explains how this could be done. In the diagram, patients are shown in green and health care personnel are in light red.
**Assumption: Infected and recovered C19 patients are immune to the disease. This is not clearly established
Better enforcement of social factors
The other reason for high number of infections in countries like India is a glaring disregard in following C19 rules in public places and the laxity in enforcement. Enforcement covers 2 parts, tracking incidents of violation and penalising the behaviour. Government should use modern mechanisms like crowd sourcing to track incidents and ride on the growing public fear to ensure penalty enforcement succeeds. The C19 pandemic has exposed governance limitations in not just following C19 rules, but also in other areas of public safety like road travel, sanitation, dietary habits, etc.
Maximise economic growth
The earlier lockdown has strained the economy. Adequate measures need to be taken to get the economy back on track. Some of the areas that need to be addressed are:
One needs to evaluate the development needs of the country in different categories like growth impetus factors (e.g. building roads, electricity capacity increase), social factors (e.g. waste water treatment plants, health care capacity), and environmental factors (e.g. solar energy generation, EV charging stations). Governments need to accelerate funding in such projects so that that large numbers of unemployed people are hired and trained. Besides giving an immediate boost to the ailing economy such projects have a future payback. The governments should not get bogged down by the huge fiscal deficit such measures can create. Such a mechanism to get money out in the economy is far than better measures like QE (Quantitative Easing) or free money transfer into people’s bank accounts
Certain items like smartphone, internet, masks, etc. have become critical (for work, education, critical government announcements). It’s essential to subsidise or reduce taxes so that these items are affordable and accessible to everyone without a financial impact
The government shouldn’t put too many C19 related controls on service offerings (e.g. shops, schools, restaurants, cabs). Putting many controls increases the cost of the service which neither the seller not buyer is willing or able to pay. Where controls are put, the Govt should bear the costs or reduce taxes or figure out a mechanism so that the cost can be absorbed.
An event like the C19 pandemic is a great opportunity to rationalise development imbalances in the country. Government funding should be channelized more to under-developed regions. This drives growth in regions that need it most. It also prevents excess migration that has resulted in uncontrolled and bad urbanisation that has made C19 management hard (guidelines like social distance are impossible to follow)
Post-C19 lockdown, the business environment (need for sanitizers, masks, home furniture) has changed. To make people employable in new flourishing businesses there could be a need to re-skill people. Such an initiative can be taken up by the public/private sector
The number of C19 infected asymptomatic patients is going to keep increasing. Building an economy around them (existing, recovered C19 patients) may not be a far-fetched idea. E.g. jobs for C19 infected daily wage earners, C19 infected taxi drivers to transport C19 patients, etc.
In the last 100 years, mankind has conquered the destructive aspects of many a disease and natural mishap (hurricanes, floods, etc.). Human lives lost in such events has dramatically dropped over the years and our preparedness has never been this good. Nature seems to have caught up with mankind’s big strides in science and technology. C19 has been hard to reign in with no breakthrough yet. The C19 pandemic is here to stay for the near future. The more we accept this reality and change ourselves to live with it amidst us, the faster we can return to a new normal. A quote from Edward Jenner (inventor of Small Pox) seems apt in the situation – “The deviation of man from the state in which he was originally placed by nature seems to have proved to him a prolific source of diseases”.
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Health Technology, AI
Article | July 18, 2023
Healthcare leaders are embracing the benefits of the cloud and software as a service (SaaS) after the pandemic challenged them to adapt and innovate like never before. 66% of them expect to move their technology infrastructures to the cloud this year – a number that is set to rise to 96% by 2024 [1]. Yet moving to the cloud is more than just a technology transformation. It’s an organizational transformation. Through cloud-based platforms and solutions, healthcare systems can begin to unlock clinical and operational insights at scale while speeding up innovation cycles for continuous value delivery.
Integrating data across the care continuum
In many ways, COVID-19 catapulted healthcare into the future. The pandemic created a new urgency for healthcare leaders to expand their virtual care offerings as a way of connecting with patients beyond the walls of the hospital. At the same time, they wanted the flexibility to scale up or down without large upfront capital expenditures. Effective crisis management also required the rapid exchange of patient information across systems and care settings. Thanks to the flexibility of pay-as-you-go cloud-based services and solutions, healthcare providers were able to quickly scale up digital health technologies to meet new demands. As a result, the acceptance of cloud has increased remarkably [2].
Keeping patient data secure and compliant
As healthcare leaders embark on this journey to the cloud, data protection is a critical consideration. Data processing in healthcare must comply with rigorous standards, whether it is HIPAA in the US or GDPR in the EU. Unfortunately, healthcare organizations also remain a top target for data breaches, calling for additional data security protection measures [3].
While the need for data security and regulatory compliance has historically motivated healthcare organizations to keep data on premises, today there is a growing awareness that moving to the cloud can in fact be the better road to travel. In fact, 60% of healthcare leaders now cite security as one of the top benefits of the cloud [4]. When healthcare organizations rely on their own data centers, they are responsible for security from end to end, which can become prohibitively complex and time-consuming as IT infrastructures expand over time. Cloud-based services and solutions can reduce dependency on local hardware to store sensitive data while automated software updates keep systems current.
Turning data into insights at scale at the point of care
Working from these foundations, the next big opportunity in healthcare is to capture the insights in the data that we are beginning to connect and integrate. This is where the cloud is also turning into a vital enabler, with its powerful computing resources and advanced machine learning capabilities, offered as microservices. These microservices provide the building blocks to develop new digital solutions that, once validated and approved, can be deployed at scale to help improve clinical outcomes and operational efficiency.
Enabling rapid experimentation and continuous value delivery
Embracing the cloud also changes the very nature of innovation in healthcare.
Healthcare-compliant cloud platforms offer a flexible foundation for rapid development and testing of digital applications. Cross-functional teams working in short and agile cycles can put new digital applications into the hands of physicians or patients more quickly, and then add new or improved features and functionalities as they gather additional user feedback. That means healthcare organizations get to innovate faster. And in smaller, more digestible increments.
Moving to the cloud is not all or nothing
Of course, none of this is to suggest that moving to the cloud is like switching a button. It’s a complex and multi-year journey for most of our customers. And it’s quite a journey for Philips, too. Any organization that has accumulated a large number of legacy systems and infrastructures over the years will have to manage a hybrid architecture during their journey to the cloud [5].
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Health Technology
Article | May 30, 2022
It’s no secret now that healthcare is an in-demand field. Today, business leaders need modern and intelligent decision-making solutions for their customers and clients. They must also focus on the right investment areas and learn the tricks for investing, spending, and setting goals for revenue generation to accelerate business.
With continuous developments in the healthcare sector, integrating AI into processes can help increase ROI. Therefore, if you, like any other business leader, are looking for solutions to empower your services and products in the healthcare domain, this article will help you through AI’s ultimate use cases and churn out a higher ROI.
What’s with AI in Healthcare at Present?
AI’s role in healthcare is evolving and enhancing traditional business operations, particularly marketing. According to a study by IBM, 71% of customers expect real-time communication. Thus, global demand is fueling the rising adoption of AI marketing solutions.
The effects of AI in healthcare are evident. Gartner reports increased marketing efficiency and effectiveness (86%), improved decision-making (71%), better data analysis and new insights (79%). Global AI spending will rise from $450 million in 2019 to over $28 billion by 2024 is not surprising.
Similar and further studies are ongoing on various use cases of AI in healthcare at scale. What are the efficient use cases of AI that will help healthcare businesses boost their ROI? Let’s find out.
How is AI Applied in Healthcare?
The promising applications of AI in healthcare to improve outcomes are very intriguing. While there is still much to achieve in the AI-dependent healthcare business, there is sufficient potential that tech companies are willing to invest in AI-powered tools and solutions.
Let’s examine the potential examples of AI in healthcare to prepare and support business strategies accordingly and foster higher ROI generation.
Predictive Analytics
AI-based predictive analytics impacts a business by automating administrative tasks, predicting sales outcomes for a year, customers’ behavior and making strategies accordingly. According to a Forbes study, AI-based predictive analytics can save businesses $18 billion in tasks, expenses, and pricing.
To understand this, one example of using AI to automate admin tasks is a collaboration between the Cleveland Clinic and IBM. Cleveland Clinic uses IBM’s Watson to mine big data and provides personalized services for customers and clients on marketing deeds.
Some of the practical applications of AI and predictive analytics in healthcare are:
Monitoring market trends to maximize marketing efforts
Organizing datasets
Creating marketing campaigns tailored to each demographic-based client
Mining collective data for future decision-making
Fraud Prevention
AmerisourceBergen Corp detects fraud and misleading business operations through AI. A sales account team conducts audits with AI to detect usual lea and queries to prevent hefty expenses for businesses.
The example explains that implementing AI in your process will help detect any significant fraud attempts inside your business operation. This will help your business save huge expenditures.
Boost Sales
By putting down false leads, AI helps in maximizing sales numbers, resulting in significant ROI generation. For example, AI transforms data into personalized data, which reduces the cost of operations.
Chatbots
Most healthcare businesses leverage chatbots on their websites to engage more and more customers and boost engagement. In this way, businesses tend to gain multiple leads and convert them into clients by providing the best marketing solutions.
Chatbots are fruitful for AI start-ups in healthcare—small businesses can deploy AI to their websites. By doing so, they can save millions in administrative costs and attract numerous leads.
The most prominent examples of AI in healthcare hail from giant tech titans such as IBM, Amazon, and Microsoft. They are assisting healthcare providers with AI to create and deploy digital-human employees.
Segmentation of Marketing Targets
Is your target audience not responding to your marketing campaigns (for example, by not clicking a link, subscribing or unsubscribing to a newsletter, or not registering for a medical event)? If that's the case, how should you go ahead?
Using AI-based tools allows your marketing to easily identify target behaviors and reactions based on the type of marketing actions to be carried out. Analyzing these actions can help segment targets based on your company's marketing objectives.
The most significant development took place in April 2022, when Amazon Alexa became fully HIPAA compliant. It works with health developers and service providers that manage protected information for customers.
AI Leads to Data Modernization
It’s all about the data—not any data!
There’s a precise association between AI and data management, resulting in data modernization. According to a Cognizant research study, healthcare leaders have made significant progress in modernizing their data. In contrast, most upcoming businesses are expecting to do so by 2024.
The maximum acceleration of AI in modernizing data will be seen in the manufacturing and marketing of healthcare products and services, respectively. It is because AI helps to churn data easily. The accessibility of data, in particular, becomes simpler with automation than doing it manually, which generates a massive amount of data. Such effects of AI in healthcare can be one of the prime reasons for the higher ROI of your business in the future.
“There has never been a greater need for skilled analytic talent in health care. Because AI is becoming more strategic, organizations must ensure access to this skill set, either by growing their analytic teams or seeking out experienced partners."
Steve Griffiths, CEO of Optum Enterprise Analytics
AI Expenditure is on the Rise
McKinsey says that by 2025, the use of AI in healthcare will be widespread, resulting in significant expenditure by global healthcare leaders.
AI is a significant concern for healthcare decision-makers, investors, and innovators as customers extensively engage and react to AI-powered services and solutions. AI is constantly bringing improvements to almost all processes, including cost savings, management of services and products, and monitoring of multiple operations. Even small businesses in the healthcare industry are proactively investing in AI applications to match steps with the current wave of innovation in healthcare services.
Accelerate ROI Using AI
AI in healthcare is becoming one of the prime responsible technologies for accelerating ROI. Technology can eradicate multiple business growth challenges. Let’s find out how.
Enhanced Performance
As previously stated, use cases of AI in healthcare can relieve stress on employees. This would allow them to devote their time to more value-added marketing activities to churn more ROI.
Emphasize Cost-Effectiveness
Most of the businesses associated with healthcare are concerned about the costs involved. With AI, they now develop policies to spend less on non-essential activities and necessitate profit-oriented actions.
"We believe in the potential of AI to deliver insights and operational efficiencies that unlock better health-care performance."
Robert Musslewhite, CEO at OptumInsight
Frequently Asked Questions
How is AI used in healthcare?
AI in healthcare automates and predicts processes by analyzing data throughout. It is used to predict potential customers, improve business management workflows, and manufacture medical products.
How does AI drive growth in the healthcare industry?
AI drives business growth by improving the ability to understand better day-to-day customer patterns and needs based on services and products.
How is AI changing the Healthcare industry?
AI applications in healthcare have demonstrated their potential to improve analytics and data management and assist service providers in making timely medical decisions.
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