Magentazorg embraces healthcare technology innovation through a fast and reliable connectivity

“In order to use more efficient and effective healthcare technology solutions, a care institution must be able to completely trust on its technical infrastructure and ensure 100% reliability. Magentazorg has found this in Huawei together with Evresys, as the right partners to support their automation to greatly support their personnel and improve the care of their clients.” Says director of nursing home care at Magentazorg.

Background

Magentazorg provides care and support to elderly people in Netherlands with care at home, nursing home care in 12 locations, and rehabilitation and treatment. Every day, 1,700 care givers with a real care heart, together with volunteers, dedicate themselves to person-centered care.

Challenges

As people live longer, care institutions are witnessing a vast growth in demand for their services, which pushes the care workload to deliver top-notch services to the clients. However, the shortage of personnel in healthcare is nowadays in the spotlight of most of the medical institutions.

Magentazorg, aware of their high increase of client demands and the limited number of caregivers, has faced challenges along the way and this is where technological evolution has proved critical to addressing new needs and preparing for a future greater demand and challenges. They needed to automate the processes to be able to identify the exact location of their residents in urgency need inside of the care facility, so one of the care givers could immediately assist them, as fastest as possible - the timing in these cases is vital as it can help to save lives. Also, the automation would help the caregivers to support more efficiently the residents with the same number of employees.

Magentazorg had then searched for a care technology which would provide them a Location Based Services platform with Evresys, which included domotics such as sensors and personal alarms. In case of a client is in urgently need of assistance, the resident can use these devices to call for help and being localized using the Evresys platform. This technology combines different domotics to check the particular situation of each resident, for example if she/he sitting or lying in bed, and the door is open. These events can be prioritized for the caregivers and will automatically inform the closest caregiver or the one who is available.

However, these domotics use different kind of protocols –Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Wi-Fi and Zigbee which should rely on a secure and stable network. The previous networking infrastructure of Magentazorg was supporting a Wi-Fi solution which wasn’t fast and stable enough for the use of domotics. Therefore, Magentazor realized they needed to change their networking infrastructure too and trusted in Huawei for that.

“When using these healthcare technology platforms, the reliability of the total solution is the most important part for the caregivers. We must trust 100% the networking infrastructure and the technology platform to use this as input to look after our clients, and that is what Huawei together with Evresys have proven to work. The partnership and cooperation between Magentazorg, Evresys and Huawei was very important to enable us to use innovations so the caregivers can fully focus on the clients.” Edwin Dupon says.

Erik Kok, Manager of nursing home care at Magentazorg: "A major daily pain point was that we did not know where a resident was who pressed the alarm button. As a result, it sometimes took us a long time to find that resident. Now with the solution of Evresys and Huawei networking infrastructure, we can directly track clients who pressed the alarm button”. The closest or next in line caregiver receives a notification with the client name and location. Magentazorg is now enabled to act more efficient and effective on alarms and help requests.

Solution

Thanks to Huawei Wi-Fi 6 access points, Magentazorg can use now the different BLE, Zigbee and Wifi protocols combined. The big benefit of Huawei is that these protocols are using the antennas in the Huawei access point, which results in a 100% stable, fast and reliable connectivity. This solution provides the connectivity with all the domotics devices used, without interruptions and no issues. Due to the support of multiple IoT protocols and the use of Evresys, Magentazorg can now easily scale up- and down with different kind of domotics. This enables Magentazorg to act efficiently on different needs for each resident.

The total solution transmits all data in real time, giving Magentazorg caregivers the most accurate information all the time.

The IT department can also set up the wearables remotely, making manageability very easy. With the alarm and living circle functionality, Magentazorg can meet the care demand of the residents. "Sometimes more than one assistance is needed. With Evresys' wide range of care home automation, we can easily respond to these specific care requests. Because this home automation is accessible via our Huawei infrastructure, we can deploy it immediately."

Results

The result is that Magentazorg can now offer a much more reliable, efficient and faster assistance to their clients and attend more at the same time, even move with the demands upcoming years, based on the technology that they now use of Huawei and Evresys. Erik Kok, Manager at Magentazorg: “Thanks to the efforts of Huawei and the Evresys, we can deploy our employees more efficiently, especially at night. We reach more residents for assistance. For example, the number of fall incidents of clients have been reduced enormously, by 50%, because we no longer have to go through every room every night.”

Also, the so called living circle functionality increases the quality of life. For example, for residents who can leave the living group independently or go outside with a defined walking zone. Living circles are widely used in elder care and nursing homes, for example for elderly people with dementia. Depending on a person's capabilities, a personal living circle is determined. Using GPS, residents can be well monitored. Edwin Dupon: "If we suspect something is wrong, we can easily see where someone is. If necessary, we can make contact via the talk-listen connection. This gives the residents more self-confidence and supports their quality of life."

Proven technology

"In order to use new healthcare technologies, we need to be able to rely on our infrastructure completely. That's why we were looking for partners who could provide proven technology. We succeeded: the Huawei networking infrastructure is fast and reliable, allowing us to securely deploy with Evresys healthcare technology. Thanks to this partnership, we can fully rely on the complete solution. We believe in aligning together, solving together and being responsible together."