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Welcome to In-Orbit, the fortnightly podcast exploring how technology from space is empowering a better world.
[00:00:04] Dallas Campbell: Welcome to Outer Orbit. This is our little bonus, extra bit of podcast where we take one of our guests. We've got Gaurangi here thank you for staying a little bit longer to talk about, all things connectivity. We covered a lot of ground in that conversation, but there was one bit that I wanted to talk about, which is unlocking space for government programme. What that is. We talked about the Arana Project before. But the unlocking space for government, in terms of connectivity, quesque se? What is this? What does it mean?
[00:00:32] Gaurangi Bajpai: Okay, so unlocking space for government.
I think it's a bigger programme that UK space Agency is running, and the entire idea is to sort of explore the use of space in areas where it has not been used yet.
[00:00:45] Dallas Campbell: And It's pretty much, space is kind of pretty much used everywhere, so I'm just trying to imagine what areas that it's not being used in.
[00:00:50] Gaurangi Bajpai: Of course, the idea is to get space technologies adopted in government agencies. If they have not been adopted yet, and why have they not been adopted yet? So do a little bit of research about why space technologies have not been adopted in certain government agencies, and how can they be adopted better?
[00:01:06] Dallas Campbell: So give us an example of areas and agencies and government that haven't using space technology.
[00:01:12] Gaurangi Bajpai: Currently the project that we are running, which is in the Phase Two, it's running for two sectors, transport and health, and that sort of got chosen after we did a little bit of study in the first sector of where the adoption is prime and key and where the movement is a little bit more.
Within the health regime, it was obviously very clear that to provide those services you need data and with data you need connectivity. In the past as well, there have been a lot of programmes where we have done pilots about using connectivity or space connectivity in health practices. So ensuring a very remote GP surgery is well connected or ensuring the on the move healthcare practitioner has the means of connecting to internet while they're on the move. Because
they would have to go to people's house, not have connectivity, collect data,
[00:02:03] Dallas Campbell: Not have the information they need.
[00:02:05] Gaurangi Bajpai: Not have the information that they need, go to public wifi setting, upload the data, and this would require like extra to and fro before they could actually get their work done. That's the area where the health of unlocking space is targeting. So from very basic problem statements of connecting very remote surgeries, people to ensure that they have the health services, the care that they deserve, and also to add a bit of innovation on top of it, using the space connectivity with say preventive and predictive models.
[00:02:37] Dallas Campbell: So people who live in sort of remote areas, I can see how space technology is certainly gonna help them.
But the sort of National Health Service more generally is the ways that we can be using space technology to make it more efficient. I mean, obviously we've all got the NHS app these days.
[00:02:53] Gaurangi Bajpai: Well, the NHS app is an app, right? You need sort of internet to even access that.
And that is just the NHS app. But imagine like real care services. You have had a fall, you have had a heart attack, and you're unable to get the care or the service because you don't have a GP which can connect you directly. You cannot connect to the health service provider. So the problem is real.
The problem is very real and when it come to NHS strategies and their line of work, we are seeing a lot of movement in remote monitoring, virtual wards, their appetite towards keeping people in their homes and ensuring that cared, that there is a lot of drive towards ensuring we do prevention rather than services. So for that there needs to be data collected from people's homes and people so that we are ensuring that, an action is taken as soon as.
There's a lot of movement on the virtual wards and the remote monitoring sort of thing, and when you want to implement a virtual ward, the basic requirement is that very reliable connectivity.
[00:03:51] Dallas Campbell: And presumably this technology can just make some triaging patients, for example, more efficient and on a bigger scale in hospitals, for example.
[00:03:59] Gaurangi Bajpai: Totally, it can start from triage. But there is no limit to where it'll stop. Because it'll end up probably in robotic surgeries.
[00:04:07] Dallas Campbell: And presumably, I mean, obviously Britain geographically, we're quite a small country. We've got a good connectivity generally, but presumably developing this kind of technology, you could then export it to other parts of the world.
[00:04:18] Gaurangi Bajpai: Absolutely, absolutely. That is one key factor. Development of that preventive care as well is one thing that you can then share with the world. But for that you have to do the exercises. But also, within UK as well, in very remote areas, we still will not have very reliable connectivity to implement these kind of resources.
This is mission critical again, right? You need that very strong and robust line of communication between a doctor and a patient, and it cannot break, and it cannot have those falls. It cannot have drops because they're providing you critical information about the care and they're monitoring your health. So even in very remote areas within Britain, it is possible that we will not have this kind of service available.
But at the same time, ambulances for example, they're required to be fully connected at all times, and when they're moving, they sort of drop connectivity. Obviously you drive. So you would probably know that when you're driving, there are quite a few not spots that you're not able to be connected in those areas and that will become very problematic for an ambulance or a healthcare practitioner.
[00:05:23] Dallas Campbell: Yeah. Presumably an ambulance is gonna need to know the best routes and if there's traffic and all the, all those...
[00:05:29] Gaurangi Bajpai: Or have all sorts of connectivity. So we did a different project as well where we ensured that ambulance had provision for multiple form of connectivity. So it can connect to 5G, for example, 4G, 2G, and also the satellite connectivity or public wifi.
So it targets that resilience thing that we were talking before.
[00:05:46] Dallas Campbell: Unlocking space for government.
This programme is developing these kinds of systems for different areas of government. So health, transport and,and so where are we? Is there kind of an end to it or is this just an ongoing programmeme?
[00:05:58] Gaurangi Bajpai: The appetite or the ambition is to have those clear path of adoptions. Once you prove it and you target those areas of showing the real impact of it, you want to create it as a service and a product that is constantly being adopted. So it is not just looking into technology, but also practices or pathways of adoption for it.
So it's creating awareness about space one and also informing the use of space in scenarios like this and ensuring that people are aware of these pilots and if it's a good programme, if it's a successful programme, it should lead into more adoption of space technology.
[00:06:34] Dallas Campbell: And, and is our government, are they quite proactive in selling this idea to government departments, you know, and to the public as well? We don't really hear about it enough.
I suppose my question is, how's it going? Are governments really sort of pushing this technology?
[00:06:49] Gaurangi Bajpai: Exactly, and it is really interesting programme because they're working very close collaboration with us. It's not we are delivering to them, but they're working together with us to sort of understand the pain points, working with partners to get this adopted and sort of make the motion happen. There is work package around collecting that information from different resources and ensuring it is translated in normal language to public of saying that we have done these. This is the portfolio of work that has been done before. This is the areas where space has shown impact, where things have already adopted the application, where they have already adopted Space Tech. So, we do address this pain point that it is probably not talked about enough. So we want to talk about.
[00:07:29] Dallas Campbell: Good. Okay, well here we are talking about it. Thank you very much, Gaurangi. Thank you. Thank you.
To hear future episodes of In Orbit, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast app and head over to YouTube to watch the video versions of all of our discussions. And if you'd like to find out more about how Space is empowering your industry, visit the Catapult website or join them on social media.