The Answer: Real-Time Visibility

Anyone who’s worked in Hospital administration knows that when bureaucracy meets human error, there can be serious consequences. A common example is the struggle to keep inventory and equipment in the right places when they’re needed. It’s not surprising, then, that an increasing number of hospitals are looking into Real Time Location Services (RTLS) tagging devices to streamline their healthcare solutions.

Theft, Loss, and Misplacement

Whether intentionally or by accident, patients and medical staff have been increasingly responsible for missing equipment. Wheelchairs are among the most common items to end up at a patient’s home or missing within the hospital, causing delays when a new patient needs them. And when assets and inventory go missing, the cost to hospitals is high. Consider, for example, the time $50,000 of stolen hospital equipment was listed on eBay after going missing from United Memorial Medical Center in New York in 2016. Money isn’t the only cost: hospital staff spend 6,000 hours per month for every 1000 nurses looking for equipment.

The impact of this lack of organization is felt by staff, but also by patients. Not only are these delays wasting valuable time that could be spent helping patients, but hospitals’ over-purchasing of assets and inventory has caused the cost of a hospital bed to rise by as much as 90% in recent years.

With that in mind, more and more hospitals are adopting Rtls Tagging Solutions to make the tools they need visible in real time.

Using the Internet of Things for Asset Tracking

Some examples of IoT healthcare devices used in asset management:

Automated Equipment

Defibrillators, hospital beds, IV pumps, x-ray machines, etc. can be tracked with a tag type appropriate to the size and value of the item. These scans are picked up by edge devices that connect to the cloud, allowing hospital staff to use a mobile app to see the floor, room, and location in the building of each tagged item in up to real time.

PPE

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) has to be kept at uniform levels so it’s ready when an emergency strikes. If fresh gloves, masks, and goggles aren’t available in sufficient numbers, surgeries can’t happen until they’re found. Tagging these items’ boxes with RFID or BLE tags allows a simple scan to determine how many of them are in a room or vehicle at any given time.

Ambulances and Supply Vans

In fact, EMS decision makers have also found solutions to visibility problems with location-based connected vehicle services. Ensuring the right equipment is present in the right quantities is mandatory when showing up on the job. Using RTLS technology has recently helped hospitals make vaccine rollout much smoother.

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The Apptricity Difference

An un-tracked hospital with inventory-blind staff is a disaster waiting to happen. The risks posed by hospital personnel not being able to find life-saving drugs or equipment on time are too high to take. And this is why Apptricity offers high-tech enterprise-grade RTLS tagging solutions that make for easy visibility in the palm of your hand. To try Apptricity’s solutions on for size, sign up for a free 15-minute demo!

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