This paper presents an ongoing work in on the future of telemedicine in O&G. There has been a huge development in the use of video consultation between remote patients and the doctors. We believe the future of telemedicine in O&G will add to this workflow by investigating how we can transfer visual medical data between "offshore nurses" and "medical experts" at hospitals onshore in order to improve diagnostics and treatment. We will describe a decision support system that supports an optimal workflow and collaboration, between medics onshore and offshore. The goal is to make better and faster medical decisions, and improve the quality of healthcare offshore. The oil companies have much of the same structure and same challenges in remote medical treatment. We investigate an optimal workflow including how technology supports a new telemedicine work process by transmitting very high quality information (e.g. ultrasound images) to the cardiovascular medical experts. We will review our work on developing a prototype "on the go" solution between medics offshore and the medical experts onshore at the hospital. The concept will be based on a Pad/PC solution capturing the ultrasound image transmission between the user and experts, a systematic work process and a knowledge base integrated in the Pad/PC "on the go solution". With optimal workflow it should not take more than 5-7 minutes from the starting point to have a decision from the medical expert. This will improve diagnostics, medical safety and health quality on offshore installations.

The oil & gas companies operating in the Norwegian Continental Shelf have commonly used the capabilities approach within the context of Integrated Operations. This approach focuses on understanding organisations as dynamic systems and provides concepts and a language for developing resources. Recent efforts are focusing on extending Integrated Operations and the capabilities approach to medical services offshore, specifically on the use of telemedicine. Telemedicine in this context involves the connection between offshore and onshore medical staff through the use of communication systems, as well the distribution of medical data obtained offshore (for instance HD images or vital signs readings). In this work we describe the elaboration of a new tool: the Capability Development Resource Matrix, based on the People - Capability Maturity Model (P-CMM) proposed by Curtis, Hefley, and Miller in 2009. This tool is designed to guide organisational development and is generated directly from the work with industry partners, being continuously tested and improved. We discuss the tool’s value for planning, development, and implementation of telemedicine in Oil & Gas and other contexts. We wrap-up with considerations about future steps in the methodology conception and evaluation.

Commercial nuclear power in the U.S. has been an unqualified success by any measure, providing safe, low-cost, carbon-free baseload electricity for decades. Today, the industry is at the peak of its historical performance in terms of generation output, reliable operations, and demonstrated nuclear safety. However, with the emergence of subsidized renewables and shale-gas generation, it is no longer among the lowest-cost electric generation sources. The business model that served the operating nuclear fleet so well over its initial lifespan is now a drag on cost performance, due to its reliance on a large, highly skilled labor force. In contrast, digital technology and innovation are enabling dramatic efficiencies in energy production, resulting in fierce competition for commodities such as electricity. The nuclear power industry responded to this challenge with many initiatives to improve efficiency and modernize plant equipment, especially in areas where reliability and obsolescence issues are pressing. However, it would be a missed opportunity to merely modernize the plant components and work processes of an outdated business model formulated to manage the technology of the 1960s. Rather, the greater opportunity is to transform that business model into one that fully exploits the capabilities of modern digital technology, resulting in substantially lower production costs and sustainable market viability. A successful example of one such transformation is the concept of integrated operations (IO), introduced into the North Sea oil and gas (O&G) industry a couple decades ago when the profitability of operating these fields was severely threatened by low global petroleum prices and the high overhead of operating offshore O&G platforms. This effort resulted in significant changes to how these oil fields were operated, enabling the industry to continue operating the platforms profitably. This example has remarkable parallels to the U.S. commercial nuclear industry. This report provides an analysis and planning framework for transforming the current nuclear power plant (NPP) operating model via transferable learnings from the North Sea O&G industry. This framework is termed "Integrated Operations for Nuclear" (ION). This report describes the key principles and methods of IO and how they are being applied via collaboration between the Department of Energy (DOE) Light Water Reactor Sustainability (LWRS) Program and Xcel Energy in an initiative to transform the NPP operating model in order to foster performance improvement and long-term sustainability. It describes a method for bringing the operating costs of a nuclear fleet in line with market-based pricing and transforming work functions to reduce costs via technological innovations. This initiative will continue over the next several years in the form of detailed development of transformative concepts for NPPs-the results of which will be published as a follow-up to this initial report on ION.

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