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The pandemic
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had an enormous impact on health care services around the world,
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and it was the greatest public health challenge we faced.
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So here in Cambridge, we tried to make sure
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we could effectively treat patients with COVID
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whilst also being able to treat patients with other medical conditions.
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Different times
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we faced pressure on the number of beds, staff, equipment and oxygen.
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For us to be able to deliver high quality, safe patient care.
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So we had to completely rethink how we deliver care in the pandemic
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and we knew that the Institute for Manufacturing had enormous engineering
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expertise that could help us with some of these challenges.
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The IFM fundamentally
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has a background in industrial engineering
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and in fact has a long history of working in the health care
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domain in areas as diverse as medical devices, through
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to pharmaceutical supply chain logistics, and even in areas
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such as hospital logistics where we hadn't had a specific background.
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We were able to combine healthcare history
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with our industrial engineering skills to be very quick at being able to respond.
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While you cannot fully compare
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a hospital to a factory, there are important similarities.
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So that made us use some of the principles and techniques
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and to apply it to the context of healthcare.
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That's essentially how we started to work on barriers, operational challenges,
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where our training as engineers could be of help.
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The collaboration brought together
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a wide range of perspectives and skills
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ranging from IFM staff and students with engineering backgrounds
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to hospital clinicians and in fact also the estate
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management people at the hospital were involved as well.
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Although we were not health care professionals,
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we understand how to improve operations.
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We understand how to improve equipment and processes,
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and we could apply the techniques that we normally apply to a manufacturing
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environment or an engineering environment into a healthcare environment.
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With Addenbrooke's, we had four key projects that we started off with.
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One was looking at patient flow within the hospital.
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So developing a model whereby we could actually inform Addenbrooke's
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how many beds or ventilators or oxygen they would need over
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the wave of a COVID pandemic.
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The second one was understanding the flow availability of oxygen in the hospital
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so we could ensure that
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the right amount of oxygen
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could be delivered to the patients at the right time.
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The third one was
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looking at the layout of the COVID testing facilities at the hospital
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so we could maximize the number of staff that could be tested in a safe manner.
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And the fourth one was that we set up a warehouse
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for PPE for the hospital at that time.
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PPE was a short supply, but there was a lot of donations of PPE
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coming from all around the country to the hospital.
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So we helped set up the house
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that acted as an intermediary between the donations and the hospital.
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On top of that,
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we also have worked on a separate project with Royal Papworth Hospital.
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We were looking at designing a new device and novel device
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that could be used to share one ventilator between two
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or more patients.
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So the partnership was successful because despite different skill sets,
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we shared common values and we were able to focus on bringing
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those skill sets together to deliver better care for our hospitals
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