Country Selector: United Kingdom
Ascom has delivered mobile workflow solutions in the UK for over 60 years. Its nurse call systems, smartphones and Unite messaging platform all focus on helping users to close digital information gaps.
By adding Wyld Mesh to its solution portfolio - technology that allows data to flow easily and securely between smartphones and IoT devices without relying on Wi-fi or 4G/5G, combined with the ability to create virtual geozones - Ascom aims to help care homes to support social distancing and improve real time communications to better manage and reduce the spread of COVID-19 and influenza.
Visitors and staff will be asked to download the smartphone app and enter information on symptoms, test results, and eventually their vaccine status to enable care homes to judge whether they are an infection risk. Residents will wear IoT devices to connect them to the system.
By integrating Wyld Mesh with Ascom’s Myco smartphones and Unite messaging platform, care homes will have vital access control over their staff and visitors via the app, as they enter a geofence surrounding the home.
Using the technology’s sophisticated location capability, care homes will also be able to create two metre virtual geozones around staff, visitors and residents to enforce social distancing and keep them safe.
The integrated solution will automatically connect all care home staff mobiles, enabling managers and workers to message quickly and securely, potential risk or breaches of social distancing guidelines.
Managers will also be able to visualise social distancing as a heat map in real time to make informed decisions on changing building infrastructure, room occupancy levels, routines and processes to further enable best practice.
While the partnership with Wyld Networks will focus on making the technology more accessible to care homes and healthcare, the contract will also see Ascom support its enterprise customer base – spanning retail, hospitality, industrial and manufacturing settings – in leveraging new opportunities with mobile mesh technology.
Paul Lawrence, managing director of Ascom UK said: “This technology is changing the way people connect and work together and our partnership with Wyld is therefore a significant step forward in our mission to better serve all Ascom customers. But it is absolutely right that residential care customers be first in the queue for this important solution, as we all strive to stay safe and minimise the effects of the pandemic.”
Alastair Williamson, CEO of Wyld Networks added: “This new partnership gives us the opportunity to integrate our innovative technology into the market-leading Ascom ICT and workflow portfolio while also leveraging Ascom’s established reach into the enterprise and healthcare markets.
“We are all acutely aware of the impact of COVID-19 on residents in care homes but a report from the US National Center for Biotechnology Information1 shows that exposure to common influenza in long term care facilities increases the risk of respiratory‐origin hospitalisation by 143%, despite a high level of vaccination. This shows that it is vital to help stop the spread of all infections and we believe that the Ascom and Wyld partnership can help do this.”