Floating hospitals equipped with AI... Merseyside's "Digital Rescue Medical" experiment

The nonprofit organization Mercy Ships, which operates floating hospital ships to assist low-income countries in Africa's healthcare sector, is partnering with Cisco (CSCO) and IT infrastructure specialist Presidio to accelerate digital transformation. While these ships dock in areas with weak medical infrastructure, the three organizations are turning the new vision of “the intersection of technology and mission” into reality by integrating digital capabilities with healthcare services.

The Mercy Ships currently operate two hospital ships, the “Global Mercy” and the “Africa Mercy,” which are docked off the coasts of Sierra Leone and Madagascar, respectively. These vessels can accommodate up to 800 medical staff and volunteers, providing medical services equivalent to those of a general hospital. However, there are challenges such as unstable network connections and poor infrastructure conditions at the ports, making it difficult to implement a cloud-based medical system. Additionally, the steel hull structure can obstruct wireless signal transmission, necessitating customized technical designs.

To address these issues, Cisco, together with the Presidio technical team, personally boarded the ship to survey the Wi-Fi environment and enhance system stability by building a dual data center onboard. All facilities such as hospital beds, operating rooms, communication devices, security cameras, and video conferencing systems are interconnected through Cisco's network. Approximately 1,600 Cisco phones and dozens of network switches support this extensive communication system onboard.

The technological upgrade has not stopped here. The Mercy is gradually expanding the application range of artificial intelligence. Currently, it mainly adopts deterministic AI technology for image interpretation but has planned to integrate generative AI in the future. Due to low bandwidth issues, most AI computations need to be completed locally on the ship, and therefore, there is a simultaneous expansion of GPU-based local computing infrastructure. Presidio has comprehensively considered cooling equipment and power stability in its design, aiming to gradually reduce dependence on satellite communications and build a self-sustaining technology architecture.

Remote medical care for education and collaborative diagnosis and treatment is also a key component. The Mercy medical team conducts synchronous consultations with multiple experts through collaboration tools like Webex and actively promotes digital education centered around simulation training, ensuring that local medical staff can maintain medical services even after the vessel departs.

Cisco recently launched its digital platform “Cisco IQ” at the partner summit, proposing a more advanced plan. This platform, equipped with agent-based AI, can optimize device status and lifecycle management, efficiently allocating limited network resources in the special environment of ships. Presidio hopes to achieve cost control while improving operational efficiency based on telemetry data.

There is still time before the launch of the new hospital ship “Africa Mercy II” in 2028. Given the continuous iteration of technology during the shipbuilding cycle, Mercy is focused on ongoing technical evaluations and infrastructure upgrades. All the networks and computing environments currently being built lay the foundation for the future AI diagnosis and treatment ecosystem.

Experts have described this collaboration as a “model of the integration of technology and mission.” The industry generally believes that the Mercy ship can provide high-quality medical treatment in Africa's healthcare blind spots, thanks to the support of its technology partners. In this era where hospitals and IT systems are inseparable, more institutions should learn from such collaborative models.