Why does wireless tracking make a difference in healthcare?

A big challenge in hospitals is managing mobile equipment.  With thousands of mobile devices and medical equipment in an average sized hospital and more equipment constantly being added to meet new advances, this puts a strain on inventory and engineering personnel to maintain equipment, not to mention a financial strain on operations who require a access to a broad range of equipment for patients.  So how can hospitals best manage the maintenance, cleaning and re-calibration requirements and reduce the financial burden by ensuring timely availability?

Use effective technology

One solution to the problem is to purchase or rent more equipment.  Whilst this may reduce shortages and enable easier equipment location, purchasing more and more equipment is usually not financially justified.

So a simple answer to this problem is to have a technology based solution that knows where all the equipment is at all times, whether inside or outside a building, locked behind closed doors, all located on a map accessed via a web browser.  This is all possible with a wireless tracking system.

Using tags that send signals over the hospital’s existing Wi-Fi network the medical equipment locations can be shown clearly on a floor map or on a list with a room or zone name.  From a wireless tracking website a user can search for a particular asset, a group of assets or search for equipment by room, zone or floor.

Furthermore using Wi-Fi pagers, service requests, system alerts and various system triggers can all be sent to the engineering and maintenance staff who can be made fully aware of all system alerts and requests while they are working around the hospital.

Make use of your existing infrastructure

In addition Wi-Fi tracking solutions can be setup in a few weeks, making use of the existing hospital Wi-Fi infrastructure.  This reduces cost and disruption to patient care or the facilities themselves.

Using Wi-Fi hardware means any hospital staff member can find any tagged hospital asset, in real time, anywhere in a building or on a site.

Finally, in addition to all the above with the right technology:

  • A technician can produce a report that lists each device and its current location shortening the time for preventative maintenance equipment rounding. This leads to increased utilisation and improved patient care
  • A Wi-Fi solution can acknowledge to a hospital worker that a asset request has been received and is being dealt with thereby reducing paging, telephone calls and asset searches
  • Software also shows how assets are used and distributed across departments, zones and buildings meaning underutilised equipment can be reallocated and excess rental capacity can be eliminated