Working with front liners in the fight against COVID-19

Huawei IdeaHub Empowers Telemedicine for Concord International Hospital in Singapore

[Singapore, June 17, 2020] Recently, Huawei IdeaHub worked in close collaboration with the Concord International Hospital in Singapore in their fight against COVID-19.

Concord Hospital, a member of Concord Medical Services Holdings Limited (Concord Medical), focuses on cancer treatment and women's health. Founded in 1997, Concord Medical is a medical service supplier specializing in cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, education, and research. In March 2020, Concord International Hospital was one of the first private hospitals to treat COVID-19 patients in Singapore.

The outbreak of COVID-19 in early 2020 brought tremendous pressure on the healthcare industry, as more doctors and nurses needed to be on-hand to respond to the increasing number of patients. Concord’s frontline medical professionals had to diagnose and treat patients correctly, effectively, and safely. The hospital also needed to protect their own staff and ensure that their medical workers have a safe and clean environment to work in.

To ensure staff and patient safety, Concord divided the hospital into two zones: a strictly isolated red zone, where quarantined patients are treated and a green zone, which is allocated for daily consultations, with limited personnel transfers between the two zones. Huawei IdeaHub bridged the connection between the zones through video-based collaboration.

By building an efficient communication bridge between the "red zone" (the quarantine area) and the "green zone" (the daily consultation area), Huawei IdeaHub enables medical workers in the "red zone" to discuss the treatment solution with experts in the "green zone". In addition, medical personnel can perform routine works such as inspection and diagnosis through video while staying in the "green zone". This improves the work efficiency of medical personnel and reduces the risk of infection.

“Since March 13th, CIH had been requested by MOH to help depending some of the increase number of pandemic COVID-19 patients in Singapore.” said Yap Yaw Kong, chairman of Concord International Hospital. "Since the detaining of COVID-19 patients, in order to facilitate the communication between the patients, doctors and medical personnel, we had activated Huawei to provide intelligent collaboration solution to communicate between medical personnel who services in isolation wards to the ground personnel, as well as to provide communication between isolation wards COVID-19 patients with our staff. This is also to prevent cross-infection between 2 levels.”

Huawei IdeaHub facilitated effective communication between the red and green zones, which allowed medical workers in the red zone to discuss the treatment and solutions with experts who are in the green zone. Furthermore, medical personnel can perform routine work such as inspection and diagnosis through video while staying in the green zone.

Implementing Huawei IdeaHub in the Concord International Hospital in Singapore underscores the value of technology in the fight towards patient recovery and treatment. Aaron Wang, Managing Director of Huawei Enterprise Business Group Singapore, said, “Used well, technology such as the Huawei IdeaHub is a powerful tool for medical professional in the Covid-19 battle. We are heartened to see how Huawei IdeaHub has helped Concord International Hospital achieve remote consultation, protect medical staff, and support the continuous fight against the epidemic. As a leader in the ICT industry, Huawei will endeavor to provide more new ICT technologies based on 5G, AI, cloud, and big data, that will contribute to Singapore's digital transformation and digital ecosystem."

Huawei IdeaHub is a smart endpoint solution that integrates multiple functions such as video conferencing, interactive whiteboard, and wireless projection. It provides intelligent remote video and collaboration experience for healthcare, government, enterprise, and education teams, allowing team members in different regions to achieve immersive face-to-face communication and collaboration cross physical distances.