Addenbrooke’s Hospital

Date

February to March 2022

Summary

The client, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and more specifically the in-house engineering team, required a patient environment monitoring tool. This tool was to be deployed in the geriatric wards at Addenbrooke’s for the purposes of helping to assess how the sleep of patients, particularly those with dementia, was affected by them being on the ward; the importance is due to ward conditions being considered non-optimal for sleep, thus in turn exacerbating neurological and mental health outcomes. Two variables that were considered particularly impactful are light and sound disturbances, so the monitoring system was based around the use of light and sound sensors. The client required the development of a system to enable: light and sound sensors to be deployed at end points within a ward; the gathering and transmission of environmental data; and the display of this data to an end user with the ability to interact and tag the data. Three team members, including the team skills leader, were deployed on the project, running for a period of six weeks, with each contributing approximately 8 hours per week. See the included project plan for a more detailed breakdown of task duration.

Our approach

A set of well defined desirable outcomes was provided by the client as part of the design brief. These outcomes were compiled into a project plan as milestones, as per the final high level chart shown below, that attempted to address all of them within the six week timeframe for the project. The project plan was agreed with the client in the first week and updated weekly, with progress mostly remaining on track. The ultimate deliverable would have been full system implementation and testing in situ, enabling the client to transition to full deployment of a prototype for long term data gathering. The individual milestones were assigned relatively evenly, such that team members had exposure to most elements of the project strengthening internal feedback and support, with team members undertaking an interactive research, development, implementation, and modification process.

The outcome

As per the project plan above, most of the milestones were achieved; those that weren’t were due to supplier and manufacturing delays on the client side, such as additional sound sensors for comparative assessment and for full system implementation being ordered in week 2, yet only being delivered at the end of week 6. Thus, the deliverables that were achieved were as follows:

1. A private GitHub repository containing a main python script and subordinate scripts
2. Appropriately commented, explainable, working code, enabling user maintenance and deployment
3. An interactive data visualisation package that can be used to manually log disturbances
4. An ergonomic enclosure design that can be rapid prototyped and is easy to assemble
5. An A2/A3 poster describing the system as would be installed in situ
6. Final update presentation and handover document

Client testimonial

Robert (HC skill leader) produced a very clear, well structured and realistic project structure within the time and financial constraints. Both Prithvi & Iqbal (HC students) went above and beyond in completing the areas of work allocated. Prithvi & Robert added a whole new dimension to the project by structuring the data collection in a way that would allow algorithmic approaches to be used as the project develops, which is something we would have been unable to do ourselves. Iqbal was superb at liaising with other stakeholders in the project and ensuring the system was appropriate for real world in hospital use.

Abigail Bush
Joint Head of Clinical Engineering Innovation, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust