Hungarian Hackathon Solution Eases Burden on Nurses

Hungary’s Team Discover won the ‘Health & Life’ category at the #EUvsVirus Pan-European Hackathon competition, a joint event between the European Commission and the most plugged in and nationally connected digital ecosystem actors from all over Europe.

The solution (basically 3D-printed glasses with built-in sensors) created by Hungarian university students enable a highly scalable patient monitoring system that minimizes physical contact between nurses and patients, which also leads to smaller shortage of protective gear. The device measures vital parameters like body temperature, oxygen saturation and respiratory rate real-time and uploads each patient’s data into a central server. With the help of a dashboard, doctors and nurses can oversee hundred times more patients, while the automatic alert functionalities make it possible to diagnose deteriorating cases instantly and to reach quicker reaction times. All while being far from the patient, staying out of risk of having to check on coronavirus patients regularly as patients initiate frequent measuring of their vital signs – all by themselves.

According to the members of ‘Team Discover’, their medical device enriched with their data analysis system is designed without the need for any specific infrastructural requirement, which allows universal usage in any country. “Furthermore, hospitals, regions or even countries can collaborate and share their data to find global patterns, which opens doors for new innovations to fight the virus together. Our modular sensor design and 3D printed case allows fast mass-production and short implementation time. From the medical view, we are keeping the medical staff in a safe distance to protect them from highly infective patients. With our real-time, large-scale monitoring, nurses and doctors can filter out and deal with most pressing cases while our system keeps an eye on every other patient.”