ETIENNE JULIEN - PORTFOLIO

At the end of my first year at INSA Hauts-de-France, I took part in the Creathon, a competition with teams of 5. The Creathon is an intensive, week-long challenge in which students are encouraged to come up with innovative proposals for products or services related to a given theme. This year's competition focused on assisting the medical center and hospital in the town of Valenciennes. Each group developed its own project targeting specific needs, and a jury selected the best project from all the groups.

I was part of a team with members from various specialties, including cybersecurity, mechatronics, and mechanical/energy engineering. Our team focused on analyzing the pooling of equipment in different geriatric centers of the Valenciennes Hospital Center, particularly at the Val d’Escaut residence. To conduct this analysis of the current equipment management situation, we visited the site to observe the conditions, interviewed various employees, and participated in a forum with experts in these fields.

We identified security issues related to the inadequate storage of materials. Additionally, we observed problems with the traceability of equipment. The staff often lacked knowledge of the equipment's location, quantity, and whether it was still usable. This poses significant challenges, especially in the context of medical emergencies or budget management.

We decided to focus our project on the tracking and traceability of equipment at the residence using RFID technology, along with the development of a web-based equipment search tool accessible via computer. Below is a detailed overview of the project.

• marking equipment with passive RFID tags (approx. 10 euros for 20 stickers)
• Installation of medium-range UHF (Ultra High Frequency) RFID readers (8 to 10m) at strategic points throughout the building.
• Each floor is divided into specific zones to reduce the number of readers.
• Location of each piece of equipment defined and updated in a database that can be consulted from an application available on smartphone and/or computer

During this project, we produced several deliverables, including a market and target analysis, a website mock-up, a case study, a value proposition, and a short video presentation of our project. Although our project was not selected in the final stages of the competition, we were later contacted by the residence's team, who expressed interest in studying our work further.