Glostrup Hospital challenged the comfort zone during an interesting innovation process that led to technological ideas for their new rehabilitation centre.

A brand-new neuro rehabilitation centre is being built in connection with Glostrup Hospital, a large teaching hospital in the outskirts of Copenhagen. The centre will offer rehabilitation for patients with spinal cord disorders and traumatic and complex brain injuries.

Ideation to find new ways of thinking

In the technological idea development process of the neuro centre’s facilities FORCE Technology’s IdemoLab has played an important role, as Project Manager Morten Christiansson from Glostrup Hospital explains:

“In the healthcare industry, we are often suboptimising things, but with an innovative project like this one, we wanted to avoid the common home-blindness. Therefore, we joined forces with FORCE Technology who could contribute with their innovative technology solutions in order to help us out of our own analytical comfort zone,” says Morten Christiansson about the cooperation with IdemoLab.

Workshops with health care professionals

According to Mikkel Leth Olsen, specialist in technological innovations at FORCE Technology, the innovation process focused on identifying opportunities and challenges which the neuro rehabilitation centre and its staff will meet. Thus, two extensive workshops with the clinical personnel were held, one at the Glostrup Hospital and one at FORCE Technology’s office in Hørsholm.

“During the workshops, we presented a number of visions for the centre’s use of technology as well as evaluating a myriad of criteria to evaluate new technology. The output of the workshops were concepts for future process and operation, categorised by themes,” Mikkel Leth Olsen explains, and gives a few examples:

“These categories included automatic registration of rehabilitation, materials status and location, and registration of a patient’s movement. Another catagory focused on communication, e.g.telemedicine inspired solutions for communicating remotely to patients, their relatives or to the staff, and easy to access information about equipment and use,” says Mikkel Leth Olsen and mentions welfare technology as a potential solution to some of the challenges.

Fruitful cooperation simulates innovation in healthcare sector

To work with innovation within the healthcare sector and to create new ideas in cooperation with professional health workers was an interesting process, Mikkel Leth Olsen adds:

“In FORCE Technology’s IdemoLab, we often concentrate on implementing innovation into existing contexts, and in this case, it was about new thinking from scratch – obviously with respect for the customer’s preferences. The healthcare staff is very professional and has thorough scientific knowledge; they see things from a different angle than us which was fruitful for all the different activities in our cooperation process. It was also interesting that many of them, independently of each other, came up with similar ways to solve problems,” Mikkel Leth Olsen recalls.

Technology applied in users' context

The neuro rehabilitation centre at Glostrup Hospital will cover an area of 25,000 square meters with room for 125 beds. Optimal utilisation of space, simpler work shifts, and new technologies were some of the factors that project manager Morten Christiansson was hoping to receive inputs to during the two workshops with FORCE Technology.

“And fortunately, we experienced that the people from FORCE Technology were able to present new thoughts and open our world to the many possible options, at the same time with good respect for our users and the context they live in. For instance, FORCE Technology emphasised that by now, technology is so advanced that we should not limit ourselves when it comes to potential technological solutions,” explains Morten Christiansson.

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