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Asset tracking is not a luxury but a requirement for modern hospitals to stay updated with best practices. The inability to quickly locate critical medical equipment in settings such as the emergency room directly consequences the cost of human lives. Today, healthcare providers should not be debating whether or not to invest in a hospital asset tracking solution if their number one priority is providing the best care for their patients.
What Makes a Solid Hospital Asset Tracking Solution?
Hospital asset tracking has been proven to have ROI in increased operational efficiency, patient satisfaction, and improved patient outcomes. Before diving into the hardware used in a hospital asset tracking solution, let’s explore what makes up a top-performing hospital asset tracking solution.
Ease of Installation
Every successful deployment of a hospital asset tracking solution begins with a successful installation. The installation should be as smooth and organized as possible from start to finish. The solutions provider needs to outline what will happen on install day and simultaneously coordinate with all stakeholders. The fewer physical infrastructure changes required, the better. The last thing you want is your team on the ground, impacting daily hospital operations.
Quality of Tags
Tags associated with assets need to last a minimum of one year, if not longer. Tags that require frequent replacement end up creating an operational nightmare. Tags should also be able to report battery life so they can be replaced towards the end of their lifecycle. You never want to have to deal with losing visibility on your asset due to a dead tag.
Support Post-Deployment
A successful hospital asset tracking solution provider will provide ongoing training after install. Providers will ensure that all stakeholders know how to use the system in place. What does this mean? This means that the solution provider makes sure its customers know how to navigate the application where assets are being displayed, added, and managed on the system.
Added Business Intelligence Through Data Analytics
Solution providers need to go beyond providing a simple update of where assets are located. Interesting features to explore within a hospital asset tracking solution include frequency in which equipment is used, areas where specific equipment is clustered, and alerts when assets leave designated areas.
Matching Applications
Are you interested in tracking things or people? Is the asset moveable or stationary? How often do you need to know where the object or person is located? What happens in edge cases (partial line-of-sight or no line-of-sight)? These questions impact what your technology stack will look like for your solution. By answering these questions clearly, you will be able to define the requirements (responsiveness, accuracy, precision) of your hospital asset tracking solution. The hospital asset tracking solution must be able to stand against any real-life scenarios.
Hardware
Now that you know what elements make up a hospital asset tracking solution, let’s discuss how you should select hardware. Below is a list of currently used devices in hospital asset tracking solutions based on publicly available research. It is not uncommon that you will start to see that many solution providers combine and share technologies in their solutions.
CenTrak
Technology Stack: Wi-Fi, CenTrak’s Gen2IR, RF Low Frequency, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)
Devices: CenTrak Star, Monitor, Tags, Low Frequency Exciters, Virtual Wall
CenTrak’s system is made up of several devices. The monitor emits infrared signals containing location information to tags used in CenTrak’s system. The monitor is a key component in specifying zone/room-level accuracy. The virtual wall adds another layer on top and creates boundaries enabling sub-room level accuracy. Besides, CenTrak provides a plethora of tags to meet form size and battery requirements. The LF Exciter hardware is used as part of the alerting system. All the hardware above can be battery-powered or wired.
The CenTrak Star Access Point communicates location and tag ID data via an ethernet connection to the location server for data processing and then sends the pertinent data to the application layer. One key thing to note about this solution is that IT may need to be involved, if you decide to incorporate your WiFi network to backhaul data to the cloud for processing before it reaches the end-user application. Hospitals have many security measures in place when it comes to using their network infrastructure, thus requiring IT to be on board in this case.
LinkLabs
Technology Stack: Intelligent RFID, SymphonyLink (LoRa), LTE-M
Devices: Bluetooth Low Energy tags & Beacons
LinkLabs has a product called AirFinder that they use for indoor positioning and asset tracking. The hardware used in their solution includes BLE tags and Beacons. The main advantage of BLE tags is longer battery life due to the efficiency at which messages are sent. Longer battery life translates into tremendous savings when you come to realize that tags don’t need to be replaced every year. In addition, the range of BLE beacons results in less hardware required for the same, if not more coverage.
One important thing to note about the LinkLabs hardware is that it backhauls using SymphonyLink (LinkLabs version of LoRa) or LTE-M rather than WiFi. This means the hardware is not dependent on the hospital’s WiFi network.
Sonitor
Technology Stack: Ultrasound, WiFi, RF Low Frequency
Devices: Quad-LTs (Location Transmitters)
Smart Tags/Badges: Parallex™
Sonitor’s Quad LTs hardware transmits ultrasound signals which are all synced up using a gateway. The tags which have received the transmitted ultrasound signals then relay their location information using WiFi as a backhaul. WiFi is heavy on energy consumption, and this impacts the battery life of the tags. The Sonitor sense location transmitters add further accuracy and precision with specified zones. The Parallex™ is a two-in-one offering that Sonitor offers as a dual location transmitter and access point.
CenTrak and Sonitor share the most similarities in the quantity of required hardware for the solution from a physical infrastructure standpoint. On the other hand, LinkLabs has reduced the quantity of hardware required in its solution.
In future articles, I plan to talk more about how the type of signal (Ultrasound, IR, RF) used and the environment you are in impact your asset tracking solution.
Inevitable Transformation
IoT Changes Everything for hospitals and the transformation of hospitals has been inevitable.
Hospitals committed to providing quality care from the time a patient enters a hospital to the time they are discharged will have a hospital asset tracking solution in place. Hospital asset tracking solutions empower people to be more efficient, reduce cost in lost equipment, and most importantly, save lives.
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