Remotely maintaining medical equipment and virtual reality meetings – Expertise in Tampere helps with the situation caused by coronavirus

Online courses and augmented reality are needed when companies work in exceptional circumstances.

What to do when hospital is full of patients infected by coronavirus and medical equipment needs maintenance? The maintenance personnel can’t visit the hospital but equipment needs to be repaired quickly. The help needed can be found in Tampere. Finland.

We have decided to offer humanitarian support to hospitals around the world: our app, POINTR, is available without charge to public hospitals for remotely maintaining medical equipment. We know that succeeding in maintaining and servicing equipment will save lives, says Ilmo Lounasmaa, the COO of Delta Cygni Labs.

POINTR is an application that works similar to Skype – download and call. Through POINTR an expert anywhere in the world can see the problem and visualize the solution directly to the video or screenshot. These visualizations can also be saved.

- The technology works in all ordinary mobile phones, even if it is called Augmented Reality (AR), Ilmo Lounasmaa points out.

The initialization of the application doesn’t require a massive project and the resources of the hospitals can be focused on the right things. Downloading the application takes only five minutes and short, clear instructions in various languages can be found on YouTube.

From the technical experts point of view, POINTR is significant for its functionality and reliability. The resolution is high and the video doesn’t pixelate even if the network is poor.

The coronavirus epidemic has created a clear peak in the number of users of POINTR.

The number of downloads started rising in January. In January there were approximately 50-100 downloads and now it’s over a thousand downloads per week, Ilmo Lounasmaa says.

Delta Cygni Labs is a VTT spin-off and it’s partners and clients include for example Ford, Qualcomm and Schneider Electric.

The e-learning platform gives creative business ideas a chance to materialize

As a result of the coronavirus epidemic, new business ideas are needed. In-house training and education in companies has also had to be rethought. Campwire from Tampere has an e-learning platform that allows you to organize a variety of courses and lessons remotely without any special technical skills.

- We make sure that your business doesn’t have to end even if training, coaching and seminars cannot be held in person. Most companies have their clientele ready and they only have to digitalize their products. There’s a big rush for patching business and no time for massive online courses. Creating an online course with Campwire is fast and easy, says the CEO of Campwire, Henri Liljeroos.

Henri Liljeroos gives an example of a yoga studio, which has created in a brief time many short yoga classes with Campwire for their customers.

People still want guided yoga classes from those familiar instructors, and now the yoga studio is able to provide them. The course can be individual lessons instead of a long two month course of yoga basics. Later, it’s possible to think of larger entities, Henri Liljeroos says.

Campwire has responded to the situation caused by the coronavirus by changing its pricing so that with a fixed monthly fee you can create unlimited amount of courses. The reform serves particularly the smaller companies, such as the yoga studio mentioned above.

 We’re giving our helping hand for the companies this way. We are also happy to help and make short consultation calls free of charge, Henri Liljeroos promises.

The easiest virtual reality to help with meetings and planning

A meeting has been arranged to introduce the new device, but traveling in the current situation is not possible? The solution lies in virtual reality. Wakeone has recently launched a response to the situation caused by the coronavirus epidemic. It’s a new browser-based virtual reality solution for example product launches, virtual events and user training challenges.

 This is the easiest virtual reality and it benefits especially industries that build products which are naturally represented in 3D like machine manufacturing and construction. In virtual reality, you can see the 3D model so observing and developing it is easier than in 2D. You can also present photorealistic products that do not exist yet, says Kari Peltola, Chief Product Officer at Wakeone.

Virtual reality also offers a new, more personal way of communicating for this exceptional situation.

Even if we cannot meet the customer in person, we must still be able to build a connection with them. Virtual reality enables a considerably deeper experience than mere video conferencing. The best experience is naturally obtained with virtual glasses, but participants can use any device, desktop or mobile, to access the event or meeting, says Kari Peltola.

The virtual meeting place can be customized according to the company's brand or, for example, Tampere Central Square. Events and meetings can have hundreds of spectators and tens of active participants. There is also a possibility to create many different rooms or spaces that can be freely navigated in virtual reality.