Marlink’s ‘Xchange Telemed’ is the winner of the SAFETY4SEA Technology Award this year. Mr. Panagiotis Falidouris, General Manager CG, Marlink Hellas, highlights ways to meet the new MLC and STCW regulations for health and medical treatment onboard.
Marlink received the SAFETY4SEA Technology Award for its ‘XChange Telemed’ which is a new telemedicine service designed to improve the health and safety of crew/passengers, while meeting new MLC and STCW regulations for health and medical treatment onboard. The 2017 SAFETY4SEA Awards were presented at a prestigious awards ceremony which took place on Tuesday 3rd at the Yacht Club of Greece, one night before the SAFETY4SEA Conference.
SAFEYTY4SEA: Marlink received the SAFETY4SEA Technology Award for its ‘Xchange Telemed’ new telemedicine service designed to improve the health and safety of crew/passengers. What does this milestone mean to your organization?
Panagiotis Falidouris: The award reflects and to some extent validates the acceptance of our turnkey approach to improving health and safety at sea. XChange Telemed is already being used to support crew welfare on board several merchant fleets by customers committed to leveraging the power of the connectivity we provide to ensure a link to medical professionals on land. This combined with the innovative medical station, patient information portal and zero CAPEX makes XChange Telemed a unique proposition with a user-base that is growing fast.
S4S: From your perspective, what could be the best practices to ensure good mental and physical health of the seafarers?
P.F.: Good facilities across the board are vital to the mental and physical health of seafarers. Crew areas must be a place to relax and socialise, but also offer privacy. Likewise, giving crew the facilities to keep in touch with friends and family, online and over the phone using reliable global satcom is vital. Satcom can also be used to provide TV-based entertainment, alongside training and of course, medical support with XChange Telemed. All of this is best practice to ensure a happy and healthy workforce.
S4S: How does your solution help to improve the health and safety onboard and how it aligns with MLC implementation requirements?
P.F.:XChange Telemed is an innovative new telemedicine service designed to improve the health and safety of crew and passengers at sea, while meeting new ILO/MLC and IMO/STCW labour regulations for health and medical treatment on board.
With XChange Telemed, Health Officers would first use the on-board medical station to establish medical measurements of the sick or injured person. All medical data is then automatically synchronised to the Web Portal and associated to the patient file. By the time the Health Officer has connected to the Medical Assistance Centre, the doctor would have already looked at both the transmitted data and the patient file, including medical history. The doctor may be able to advise a treatment right away or ask pertinent questions in order to establish a diagnosis quickly. The doctor can establish a live video consultation with the vessel to see the patient first hand at any time. The video connection can also be used to guide the Health Officer in his examination for instance, if he needs help to operate one of the instruments. Still images can also be quickly transferred from within the system.
S4S: Do you have any new projects on the pipeline and/or plans that you would like to share with the rest of the industry?
P.F.:One of the most recent crew-focused solutions for XChange centralised IT and communications management system is XChange Media, which is a simple to deploy integrated media streaming solution. It is designed to deliver high quality on-demand content for crew on their own smartphones, tablets, laptops and, uniquely, communal televisions. With XChange Media, employers can increase crew satisfaction cost-effectively through the provision of daily updated content covering international news, reports, sports, and magazines. XChange Media and online training facilities can also can be used to improve safety and wellbeing, through educational content that e.g., helps to overcome the taboos of talking about mental health.
S4S:What is your key message to the industry stakeholders with respect to a healthier working environment onboard?
P.F.:‘Better safe than sorry’. XChange Telemed can support sick and injured people by connecting them to medical professionals but it can also help ship owners to save money. If someone is seriously injured or unwell, the Captain may have to re-route his ship or call in a helicopter evacuation. This can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But with remote medical consultation, it may be possible to avoid this, and provide better support for the patient until the original destination is reached.
The views presented hereabove are only those of the author and not necessarily those of SAFETY4SEA and are for information sharing and discussion purposes only.
