Saensuk Smart City launches smart healthcare pilot
Saensuk Smart City, a project by the Saensuk Municipality in Thailand, has become the first smart city in the country to announce a live pilot based on multiple proofs-of-concept that can be extended to other innovative, reliable smart applications. The first phase of the project is the implementation of a smart healthcare monitoring system, aimed at improving the quality of care towards Saensuk’s ageing population.
Thailand’s first smart healthcare pilot
Piloted in collaboration with technology partners Dell, Intel and the IoT City Innovation Center (ICIC), this smart healthcare project is the first of its kind to be implemented in Thailand.
15% of Saensuk’s 46,000 residents are ageing citizens, most of whom are living at home alone during the day with minimal supervision or in nursing facilities. Launched in January 2016, the pilot project targets over 140 households with elderly members. It aims to monitor elderly patients and provide insights to help the government optimize nursing resources and operate healthcare services more efficiently.
“Municipal nurses in Saensuk traditionally visit elderly residents regularly as part of on-going patient engagements. However, during emergencies, the nurses could not respond swiftly or appropriately as they could not tell when an incident had occurred, or what type of medical attention was needed. The pilot project now allows nurses to remotely monitor the health of elderly patients through the Cloud, data analytics and Bluetooth connectivity,” said Narongchai Khunpluem, Mayor of Saensuk Municipality.
IoT healthcare monitoring system
During the pilot, elderly patients will wear a small Bluetooth-enabled smart device either as a bracelet or a necklace. The smart device monitors number of steps, movements, walking distance and sleeping patterns, and can alert the healthcare practitioners as well as the family members when unusual activity is detected such as an abrupt fall, or when the panic button is activated.
Dell has implemented intelligent Intel-based gateway systems to aggregate and analyze the large amounts of health data generated daily by the smart devices. Relevant data and insights are sent to the municipal nursing headquarters cloud system, where city-wide updates are displayed in real-time.
“With access to patients’ medical history and real-time data, local medical practitioners can identify specific emergencies and discern the type of medical response needed for urgent cases. This has helped the local nursing services to resolve the challenge of limited human resource while still being able to meet the demands for the right support more swiftly and efficiently when an emergency occurs,” said Erwin Meyer, General Manager, Asia-Pacific South, OEM Solutions, Dell.
Measuring pilot outcomes
Mr Khunpluem said that the aim of the healthcare monitoring system is to prevent and reduce potential accidents for the elderly. To evaluate the project, the municipality, with assistance from Burapha University, plans to gather information related to accidents suffered by the elderly from hospitals located within its communities. Information from this research will be used to build a database to evaluate against new accident data.
“Ultimately, the municipality’s goal is to take better care of its citizens, especially the elderly. The project, in fact, doesn’t focus on quantitative results, but rather qualitative. Being able to provide the monitoring system for up to 150 elderly citizens in its communities is considered a success by the municipality at a certain level,” said Mr Khunpluem.
Dr Apinetr Unakul, Advisor to the board of IoT City Innovation Center (ICIC) said that the proof of success for the project depends on the number of new developments and ideas generated by the team.
“In this project, Saensuk is actually a kind of test-bed for IoT and innovation. Ideas and developments will all be put on trial before being adopted to use in areas outside of Saensuk. The results from the trial will be used as a basis for implementations in upcoming smart city projects in the country. Thus, the number of developments achieved during the trial period will be a good indicator for the success of the project,” said Dr Unakul.
Synergy from the pilot project
Upon the completion of the pilot phase, the solution can be deployed for other smart city applications, such as streamlining public safety and maintenance activities, ultimately making Saensuk even more attractive as a tourist destination. Cost savings from the healthcare IoT pilot will be directed into other Saensuk Smart City programs, such as a mobile app-based tourist information system that will easily and quickly alert visitors to events, services and other information of interest.
“This pilot project is proof that new technologies can be seamlessly integrated into residents’ lives to benefit both the city and community. The final solution architecture for this project will be the ideal blueprint for other smart city programs not only in Saensuk, but for other smart cities in Thailand, and around the world,” said Mr Khunpluem.
Saensuk Smart City’s future plans
Saensuk Smart City is expected to be completed by 2018. Future implementation projects will include face detection IP surveillance at Bangsaen beach to improve safety and a smart tourism information system.
“In the long run, we would like to monitor floods using advanced technologies. Each year, the municipality usually faces a flooding problem. We hope that the technology would enable the municipality to be able to deal with the problem in a more effective way.”said Mr Khunpluem.