Digital Health: Medical "Phone booth" to combat the nursing crisis
The MedicubeX eHealth station is designed to relieve medical staff during routine examinations. After the examination, a receipt with data is issued.
(Bild: heise online)
With its "eHealth Station", Finnish start-up MedicubeX aims to relieve the burden on medical professionals and counteract the impending nursing shortage. According to the company, half of the nursing staff in Finland will retire by 2030. In Germany, there will probably be a shortage of 500,000 nursing staff by 2030, compared to around ten million worldwide.
(Bild: Ali Vahid Roodsari)
The closed, CE-marked station, about the size of a phone booth, was developed based on a single office cubicle from office equipment supplier Framery. It is equipped with various medical measuring devices and is designed to enable non-invasive health checks "at hospital level" to record the most important vital data in five minutes without the need for medical staff. The company promises that up to a third more patients can be treated per shift.
At the end of the session, there is a kind of receipt, on which all the data is recorded. Alternatively, the data could also be transferred to an app such as the electronic patient file. The eHealth Station data is structured according to the HL7 FHIR standard, which will also apply to the European Health Data Space.
(Bild: MediacubeX)
Non-invasive health check
The station measures blood pressure, pulse, oxygen saturation, respiratory rate and body temperature. An integrated scale determines weight, body mass index (BMI), body fat percentage and calculates basal metabolic rate.
The station also measures heart rate and heart rate variability. An AI-supported analysis is intended to predict possible risks of cardiac arrhythmia, cardiovascular disease and diabetes (type 2). Artificial intelligence is used to evaluate the rhythm of the 1-channel ECG. According to the start-up, the ECG can "immediately recognize more than 20 different arrhythmias and calculate ECG intervals and complex durations".
Public test in Helsinki
The MedicubeX eHealth station has been used for routine examinations in a public health center in Helsinki for around a year. According to medical director Timo Lukkarinen, 96 percent of patients who have used the station so far have rated it positively and would use it again.
Medicube X plans to bring the station to other European countries and the UK before the end of this year. The company did not name a price for the eHealth Station at the DMEA.
(mack)
