fbpx

UK Business Spotlight 14th December

Table of Contents

Share This Post

Stone 360

As part of our ongoing mission to support UK businesses with innovation and funding, our business spotlight section contains news and resources which your company may find useful.

New Mobile And iPad Application For Businesses To Arrange And Track E-waste Disposal

E-waste disposal

Popular IT total service company, Stone Group, has recently created a new mobile app for e-waste collection and recycling ease. The company provides IT advice, products, and device replacement for some of the biggest UK brand names in the public and private sector. 

Their application, Stone 360, aims to promote waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling in businesses. Currently, the UK is showing a strong lack of attention to e-waste recycling compared to other areas. While cardboard recycling has reached around 80%, e-waste is still down at 18%, per year. This means that 92% of WEEE products in the UK end up in landfill sites. The hazardous chemicals found in e-waste have harmful implications on the surrounding environment, contaminating air, soil, and water. The UK is currently the second highest global creator of e-waste.

The application makes it easy for businesses, schools, colleges, and universities to have their old IT devices collected, processed, wiped, and either recycled or restored. Stone Group explain that they ‘put the power of green technology in your hands.’ The app helps businesses manage their end-of-life waste, and improve their public image through sustainable practices. 

Stone 360 allows their customers to arrange and track IT waste collections, as well as accumulate points that can be used as discounts on Stone Group IT products or turned into cash. 

The most impressive feature of this new application is its link to the National Forest. For every point target a business hits, the National Forest will plant a tree. Businesses can track the amount of trees they plant on the app, in a fun, virtual forest.

Latest Tech Innovation For Medical Trainees: The Virtual Patient

Medical innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) have seen a recent development benefitting NHS medical trainees. The ‘Virtual Patient’ is the brainchild of Virti, an Extended Reality (XR), AI, and Gamification platform aimed to help medics learn faster and retain knowledge for longer. 

The ‘virtual patient’ is accessed on a VR headset, tablet, or PC, and mimics real-life medical scenarios. The aim of the innovation is to help medical students hone their Soft Skills; the ability to demonstrate compassion to patients, explain diagnoses and treatments in layman’s terms, and manage challenging situations. 

Usually, training for developing soft skills takes place with a large group of medics and a singular actor. However, ‘virtual patient’ creator, Dr Alex Young, explains that this practice was made challenging following the outbreak of the current pandemic. 

The technology is currently being utilised at Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, helping trainee medics to continue valuable training while keeping social distancing measures in place. This technology has been used since the start of 2018, and throughout the pandemic. For front line staff who needed training in PPE and new forms of intensive care wards, Virti’s ‘virtual patient’ was a valuable tool. 

Not only has this virtual tool proved valuable in the current climate, but was benefitting medic trainees prior to the COVID-19 outbreak. An in-company study found that when using the ‘virtual training’ software, participants were able to retain 230% more knowledge than with typical training. This has to do with the one-on-one medic to patient experience, something that has frequently been a rarity with the 30 person class-wide typical training, with just a single actor.

The Virtual Patient
Credit: Time

More Resources

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.