PreLifa, a platform to communicate with patients’ families

The M3DISIM project-team has been working closely and for several years with the anaesthesia-intensive-care department of the Lariboisière hospital (on issues of monitoring augmented by modelling, unrelated to the project). The head of the department, Alexandre Mebazaa, called Dominique Chapelle on Wednesday March 18 to inform him of an important need that was announced at the arrival of the massive influx of patients in intensive care, expected for the following week. The aim was to alleviate the "black hole" effect caused by the particular situation of Covid-19 patients, for whom families risked receiving no news (or very little) of their loved one during the entire stay in intensive care, because the patients themselves are generally not in a condition to give news, and access to hospitals is not authorized for families in the Covid context.

The idea was to set up an IT platform allowing all the caregivers (doctors, nurses, nursing aides, physiotherapists, etc.) to send messages to the patients' families in a very simple way, directly "at the bedside" of the patient. It therefore seemed obvious to associate Nicolas Anciaux and the PETRUS project-team, who for their part have an expertise in the management of secure health data, as well as a long-standing collaboration with the Hippocad company.

This double collaboration allowed us to very quickly (in 24 hours) design the technical solution that we named PréLiFa, then Hippocad ensured its development in 48 hours based on their ASAPRO software environment, after which we tested the platform together in 48 hours as well, before launching the deployment at Lariboisière hospital (carried out by Inria in 48 hours). Within a week, therefore, PréLiFa was already in orbit, just in time to "face the wave" that we had anticipated!

PréLiFa has so quickly become a part of the caregivers' practice that few remember that it was created just a few weeks ago.

Alexandre Mebazaa, Head of the Department of Anesthesia-Intensive-Care at Lariboisière and Saint-Louis Hospitals

Directly after Lariboisière, we extended the use of PréLiFa to two other hospitals, Saint-Louis and Beaujon, in less than a week again. We then handled the operational management of the platform in this perimeter for two weeks. Beyond the deployment operations (account creation and training for caregivers), our interactions with the intensive care units were very close throughout this period, particularly through the platform's back office, coordinated by Céline Grandmont, whose role is to contact the patients' families to register them on the platform, before forwarding the messages sent by the caregivers after a quick proofreading step. Beyond this period, in view of the success of the platform, the APHP decided to extend it to all its hospitals, taking over its operational management (deployment and back office).

The collaboration with hospitals on one hand and Hippocad on the other hand has been intense (in 24/7 mode due to the crisis situation) but extremely warm and pleasant. The dedication shown by all the players, including the support staff who accompanied us (at Inria as well as APHP), was perfectly admirable. The many expressions of gratitude addressed by the caregivers to all the members of the project are a powerful and unforgettable source of pride for all. This new means of communication between caregivers and families, complementary rather than competing with the usual telephone contacts, has proved to be extremely appreciated by all and meets a need that had been poorly understood until now, so that the families, beyond the news, perceive to what extent the patients are surrounded by a whole team of dedicated professionals, as opposed to the coldly technical image that the hospital can often give. It is a good bet that the tool should be continued beyond the current crisis, and extended to many other uses for the link with families!

One Thursday afternoon, being in a video call with our partners from Inria and Alexandre Mebazaa describing the situation of his department and specifying his needs, touched us. Naturally, we all mobilized to respond together as quickly as possible to his expectations.  Quickly, we agreed with our partners on the distribution of roles and our teams were eager to give their best during the evening and all weekend to provide the expected solution within the requested timeframe. It is a great source of pride for all of us to have made a modest contribution to help the caregivers in this very special context, with a strong focus on the families. We did not choose this sector of activity for nothing: humanity and technology can go hand in hand.

Madjid Hamici, CEO Hippocad