RealWear Rapid Response to COVID-19, Including Donations of Technology
RealWear’s immediate response includes new partnership with Tencent for zero-contact thermal screening and donations of hands-free HMT-1 devices for red-zone/greenzone medical team communications
LAST UPDATED MARCH 4, 2020
Our mission is about empowering frontline workers, handling industrial downtime swiftly. That mission is rapidly extending into fighting COVID-19 as it makes its way from China to Italy and now, as of this week, to our neighbors in Seattle and Portland.
Given the unique hands-free nature of our device, our friends at RealWear China (a joint venture with RealWear, Inc.) have taken several positive, proactive measures to help those fighting COVID-19 on the front lines. Our goal is to contribute, in our own small way, to the reduction of the spread of the virus so that our society and our economy can stabilize as fast as possible.
RealWear China’s focus was for the medical and first-responder community, and to help keep both affected and non-affected people addressed, but also to assist overall with business continuity, if possible.
The following two actions have been taken since the outbreak:
- We have jointly developed a solution focused on operations restoration
- We have donated devices to help minimize the spread of the virus.
We are in intermittent communication with China, and what little information we are getting we are passing it along to you.
Below we will outline what we know about #1 and #2.
#1 Help in Restoration of Business Operations
Over the last several days engineers from Tencent, one of the world’s most prominent technology companies, have come together virtually and worked with full focus to help address the growing business impact in China.
Tencent and RealWear China launched a joint solution to tackle key challenges of restarting business operations (business continuity) in the face of the threat of rapidly spreading COVID-19. The solution aims to help governments, companies and organizations recover their operation, specifically in the area of employee management, customer service, and plant maintenance.
The joint solution leverages the AI and big data capabilities from Tencent Cloud together with RealWear’s voice-driven, cloud-connected AR enterprise wearable device. The solution allows for approved employees to receive faster zero-contact temperature screening, self guided training and digital workflow, remote video support for production, service, and plant maintenance. Everything was done in the remote fashion from solution concept to release.
This is a compelling example of how tech companies can work together to fight coronavirus through knowledge transfer. This is why we are so proud to work at RealWear. Startup companies like ours can also play a high-impact role in this crisis by empowering people with purpose-built technology.
#2. RealWear China Donated More Than 20 HMT-1s
RealWear China has donated more than 10 HMT-1s to Huaqiao Hospital in Kunshan county in Suzhou city, 50 kilometers west of Shanghai. The current use case to fight coronavirus is to facilitate communication between medical teams in the red zone and doctors in the green zone.
Here in the states, we have been anxiously awaiting feedback from the doctors (through our team) on this use case, and have finally received confirmation yesterday from our colleagues in China there is a strong need for this solution.
According to RealWear China’s Michael Lyu, who is Director of Ecosystems and Alliances, the process looks something like this. one doctor or nurse wears the HMT-1, checking the patient’s health and condition inside the isolated zone or infected zone, while the other doctors will play as a mentor role in the clean zone. By doing this, they can check and talk with the patient via RealWear’s hands-free system. Of course, this will reduce exposure to cross infection and cut down on the depletion of protective gear and equipment. Our colleague in the field there has gone twice to take photos.
Here are two batches of photos he has shared with us; we are anxiously awaiting more photos, from this and other hospitals.
If you need more information about COVID-19, we recommend reading the regularly updated FAQ on the CDC website.
We also want to highlight several of our software partners in the RealWear ecosystem who have posted about what they are doing and will keep our links updated below.
IN THE COVID-19 NEWS
CNBC: Coronavirus creates new opportunities for patients to try telemedicine
GEEKWIRE: “How the coronavirus outbreak and supply chain slowdown are impacting West Coast startups”
PORTLAND BUSINESS JOURNAL: A Vancouver startup joins coronavirus fight”
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2020/02/25/a-vancouver-startup-joins-covid-19-fight.html