LoRa-based solutions to optimise health services in China

These solutions provide healthcare workers with data and insight into community health, allowing more optimised workflows for the distribution of efficient healthcare services during the ongoing Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

With the current COVID-19 outbreak in China and worldwide, the task of monitoring and managing quarantined and isolated personnel remains a critical challenge. Health services employees, including disease control and prevention teams, are increasingly leveraging smarter applications based on IoT to provide efficient, high quality care to their communities.

Traditional quarantine methods, including camera usage, door sealing and locking, are limited in effectiveness and typically unable to effectively monitor the status of building exits and entrances. Additionally, these methods require frequent manual inspection, which increases labor costs and exposes maintenance workers to contact with isolated persons. LoRa-based solutions bring real-time insight into quarantined buildings and replace manual processes.

CIAAIoT and EasyLinkin integrated LoRa-based magnetic door sensors with Alibaba Cloud's Cloud-based application development platform and services to create a ‘smart doorkeeper’ solution for efficient building monitoring. IOCA, RisingHF, Winext Technology, and other leading LoRa-based device manufacturers collaborated with Tencent Cloud to leverage its LoRa-based door sensors in a new Cloud-based door seal monitoring solution. These products have successfully been deployed into the residential communities of China’s Hubei province, as well as Chengdu, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Zhengzhou.

Both Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud’s Cloud-based monitoring solutions are comprised of a LoRa-based gateway and connected door sensor, and immediately begin the transmission of accurate door use data upon deployment. These LoRa-based applications offer the following features:

• Simple and easy installation, connecting instantly to a network.
• LoRaWAN-based connectivity with long range transmission and deep signal penetration.
• Low power consumption.
• Consistent and reliable 24/7 remote operation, management and maintenance.
• Real-time reporting of building access changes, reducing the need for manual inspection and increasing management efficiency.
• Simple integration with temperature and humidity sensors, smoke and fire alarms, as well as other smart building applications.

Data collected from the LoRa-based solutions is easily viewable on Alibaba Cloud or Tencent Cloud’s Cloud-based platforms for trend analysis and insight into quarantine effectiveness, as well as enabling the optimisation of personnel management.

In addition to quarantine monitoring, Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud’s solutions offer the capabilities to deploy in shopping mall security, hospital patient care, child safety protection, and other scenarios to monitor the status of door and window use in real time.

"Smarter technologies and IoT applications play an important role in providing high quality health services during COVID-19. Semtech’s LoRa devices and LoRaWAN protocol provide an easy to use and deploy solution to quickly connect systems and provide optimised, effective healthcare in communities,” said Mike Wong, Vice President of China Sales for Semtech.