If you need a reminder, my name is Joe Linogao, a graduate student of the Engineering with Management program at Trinity College Dublin (#AlumniLife). You may have remembered me from the machine learning project I talked about last year and my “creative” approach to making these blogs.

Reference picture of Joe Linogao

I undertook my Leadership-in-Action project from June to July of 2022 in partnership with Akara Robotics, a startup healthcare robotics company, and the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Cornwall, UK (duh). My project involved introducing some new robotics technologies to the NHS staff as well as give a look into the future of healthcare. Additionally, it involved talking with the NHS staff about different prototypes provided with Akara and gathering feedback about the robots and the staff’s experience. It was my first job out of University and my first time living alone. How was it? To put it simply, it was incredible!!

Me in scrubs (I know how my parents feel every day now)

I showcased two robots to the Endoscopy and Isolation wards of the hospital. The robots were called VAir and VSurface and were created to respectively clean the air and surfaces in hospitals using UV lights. The first three weeks involved me showcasing VAir to the Endoscopy staff. This period involved me training the staff with the robot and getting feedback about the robot before presenting it all back to Akara. The last three weeks had me showcasing VSurface to the Isolation ward (where COVID patients are taken care of) by performing demos of the robots in rooms where patients are discharged. You can see a picture of that below (and yes I am absolutely covered in protective gear. Surprisingly enough I never actually got COVID during that time). 

Me conducting research in an isolation ward (it was a miracle I didn’t contract COVID during my time here)

So what did I learn? There was two key things I improved throughout my LiA - people skills and time management. Firstly, I felt like I gained a lot of confidence when it comes to taking to new people, especially in a professional setting. As the weeks progressed, I found that I was a lot more confident talking with the hospital staff and they felt more comfortable giving more honest feedback about the robots. Additionally, I learned that life is not perfect and that everyone has their own individual schedules. I found that I had to be a bit more flexible with people’s time and had to be patient when a task I needed to do relied on other people. 

The second skill that I improved on was my time management skills. Since I was essentially on my own as the lone intern managing two robots across two different wards (WHICH BY THE WAY, WERE ON TWO DIFFERENT GOD DAMN FLOORS FML), it crucial for me to be able to utilise the time I had effectively. At the start, I was very disorganized, as I would miss when a patient would leave or miss when staff members were free to do training. But once I found my rhythm and figured out what worked for me, it got pretty easy to integrate all I wanted to get done in a day.

Overall, I very much enjoyed my LiA project and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I felt that the project improved how I work as a person and I discovered what can I achieve when given a new working environment. The friends that I made both in the hospital and in the Cornwall region were amazing and made my stay a lot better. Thanks to my efforts, the hospital have a new piece of game-changing technology and the connection between Akara Robotics and the NHS has gotten even stronger. In my eyes, I felt like I’ve done something really impactful and I am very happy with what I managed to achieve.