Cork nursing home piloting software to detect early Covid-19 warning symptoms

AN east Cork nursing home is piloting remote temperature checking software that can detect early Covid-19 warning symptoms in staff.

Oaklodge Nursing Home in Cloyne is the first nursing home in Ireland to do so, amid concern regarding how to tackle the spread of the virus in the country's nursing homes.

According to the HSE's chief executive, Paul Reid, there have been 248 outbreaks or suspected outbreaks in long-term residential care facilities in Ireland. 60% of nursing homes did not currently have cases of Covid-19.

Testing is to be carried out on all staff and residents of nursing homes across the country.

The early warning software being piloted in Oaklodge Nursing Home was developed by software development company 8 West Consulting, with the College of Medicine and Health at University College Cork (UCC), The ASSERT centre and Tyndall Institute at UCC.

The early warning software being piloted in Oaklodge Nursing Home was developed by software development company 8 West Consulting, with the College of Medicine and Health at University College Cork (UCC), The ASSERT centre and Tyndall Institute at UCC.

temperature is too high, an alarm is triggered, warning them to stay at home and self-isolate.

Professor Barry O’Reilly, Director of the Assert Research Centre at UCC, said: “A huge amount of diagnosed cases of COVID-19 are among the healthcare community working to halt the spread of the disease. The single common variable in the vast majority of cases is a rise in body temperature. With this in mind, 8 West decided to repurpose some of its existing SafeTrx technology to build a Covid-19 Remote Early Warning System (CREW) for frontline workers, in partnership with a strong project team that includes Sony, emergency medicine clinicians, medical researchers from our own ASSERT Centre (College of Medicine and Health, University College Cork), the Head of the ICT for Health Programmes and Head of the Life Sciences in UCC and Cambridge Wireless."

8 West’s co-CEO John Murphy said, ‘The CREW platform is exhibiting good functionality and connectivity between the wearable thermometer, wearable smart devices, cloud platform and dashboards. Preliminary data analysis is showing good usability, positive encouraging and consistent temperature recording results, with close alignment of the sensor data to that from tympanic membrane temperature data."