An engineer and a doctor enter a virtual room. What in regular days would be the start of an over-used joke is an accurate description of the mind-blowing and potentially life-saving innovation empowered by Kaltura in the fight against COVID-19.
With medical personnel at the frontlines and some of the startup-nation’s brightest minds out of work, a group of over 200 doctors, product managers, engineers, software and hardware developers, and healthcare experts decided to take action and support the formidable efforts to mitigate the COVID-19 health crisis in the only way they know how – using cutting-edge technology.
Forward-Thinking yet Effective-Immediate
Under tight timelines and social distancing restrictions, this group of volunteers from all over Israel put together a virtual event, powered by Kaltura Meetings virtual spaces, to brainstorm together, connect with health leaders worldwide, collaborate and simultaneously design and build forward-thinking yet effective-immediate solutions to address the system’s most burning needs.
While easily navigating between full-forum sessions that took place in the virtual assembly hall and smaller breakout rooms for project-specific group discussions and workshops, each team had only two weeks to thoroughly research the problem they were facing, interview patients and their families, as well as doctors, nurses and medical staff, investigate the technology stack available, and then define and develop a ready-to-market prototype.
Using Kaltura’s hyper-engagement-oriented tools, they were able not only to communicate in real-time but also to continuously present their findings and progress, collaboratively sketch schemas and architecture outlines using joint whiteboards, leave the rooms and come back with all of their work and conversations at hand, recorded, transcribed and searchable.
From Remote ICU to Zero-Human Diagnosis
By way of example, one specific group created a revolutionary long-distance diagnostic system that enables vital signs (body temperature, pulse, respiration rate, blood pressure) check-ups, from several meters away, eliminating the risk undertaken by hospital personnel and MDA (Israel’s emergency service). Utilizing laser-based optical microphones, together with thermal cameras and computer vision algorithms, to check various indicators of COVID-19, they plan to distribute the system to hospitals and public facilities nationwide. The system was successfully lab-tested last week, and the team is now working with Assuta Ashdod hospital to finalize a fully functional version over the course of the next few weeks.
“It was a great honor for our team to be part of this effort against the COVID-19 pandemic and be able to support our medical staff in their battle on the frontline,” said Igor Penyasov who is leading he zero-human-interaction diagnosis team. “It was amazing to work with so many people and organizations willing to voluntarily contribute for this cause, and to have such great support from the medical staff. Eventually I hope that our solution will help the medical staff effectively cope with the patient surge and subsequent stress on the staff and facilities”.
For more information about the project, click here.
