At the Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Myllypuro (Helsinki), the world`s largest simulated hospital has been set up: in this theatre, technologies, practices and processes can be tested to improve healthcare output from the point of view of logistics flow, patients, materials and medical devices. The two thousand square metre, two-storey building offers a complete platform for pre-clinical product and technology development, as well as a research and testing area for Finnish and international companies. The special features of this pre-clinical research and testing area for processes and technologies are as follows: it is not clinical, pharmaceutical or animal research, but a fully equipped area in which technologies can be tested, but also processes and people training. All the typical environments of a hospital are recreated here, from the ambulance to the operating theatre and intensive care wards. Spaces perfectly set up, such as the delivery room with new mother and baby ready to be cared for after birth; the ambulance operating on a crowded street; an operating theatre with complete instrumentation. All meticulously reconstructed, equipped with microphones and video cameras, and assisted, beyond the glass, by consoles where professionals instruct new nurses or first-aid workers, technicians and assistants, in all those operational, technical or technological roles that take place in all clinical areas, but which do not concern actual clinical activity. These are mainly paramedics and nurses, who study here how materials are arranged, how technologies are used, but also companies that can use these spaces to test the ergonomics and concrete use of new devices, in an environment that is in every way like a real hospital. The objective is the training and preparation of people who, once in the field, will have gained experience that will enable them to act in a safer and more aware manner. In the same building, there is also the ‘Centre of Biomechanics and Movement‘, an analysis centre for motor rehabilitation: a large, futuristic centre for motor rehabilitation has been set up in this new university centre, which serves athletes, patient rehabilitation and also university research. Gait, posture, motor alignment and physical strength are studied. It is also used for the disabled, to measure the prostheses that will replace missing limbs. Among the technologies it is equipped with are a three-dimensional movement analysis system, a gait measuring mat, and sensors to measure muscle strength, capable of drawing a complete profile of the person from the point of view of movement. Read more on Metropolia.fi
