RFID AND WI-FI MAKES FOR EASY ASSET TRACKING
By Roger Willmott, Managing Director, Airetrak

The growth in adoption in wireless LANs in the past few years has opened up many opportunities for the use of Wi-Fi based Real Time Locating Systems (RTLS) allowing real-time tracking of objects or people inside a wireless network. Long life battery powered Wi-Fi tags are attached to or embedded in objects and devices that receive the wireless signals from the tags to determine their location. Increasingly, the technology is also being used for other applications such as to monitor temperature to ensure it remains within pre-determined thresholds.

The initial adoption of Wi-Fi technology based asset tracking is in hospital. Being large facilities, hospitals struggle to keep track of their high cost assets as they are moved about the building. Placing an unobtrusive tag on high value or urgently needed equipment can solve the problems of loss and having to trace equipment at short notice.

Enhancing Equipment Libraries

Many Acute hospitals have implemented equipment libraries to centralise the management of frequently used items. These libraries typically include medical equipment such as Volumetric Infusion Pumps (IV pumps), Patient Controlled Analgesia pumps (PCAs) or Syringe Drivers.

Using RFID tags in conjunction with the hospital?s Wi-Fi system offers additional operating benefits to equipment libraries by providing them with real-time information regarding the usage and location of such equipment as well as automated status updates to staff on what equipment is available. The system can keep account of whether there is insufficient or a surplus of devices available and automatically notify staff when equipment is ready to be collected. This enable the amount of equipment held within the library to be reduced by 10%. Therefore a typical District General Hospital (DGH), which would normally hold around 200 items in a library with a total value of £400,000, this can result in immediate capital savings of £40,000 with an ongoing saving in revenue costs.

Bariatrics and lifting equipment

The NHS is now dealing with an increasing number of obese patients necessitating the use of specialised or bariatric lifts or chairs. NHS Trusts are finding such equipment hard to manage as it is usually dispersed around the Hospital and not managed by the Medical Devices department. Despite the specialist nature of this equipment, often it is similar in appearance to regular beds or wheelchairs, leading to bariatric apparatus ?blending? with the normal hospital equipment.

Such equipment is also subject to specific regulations such as the Pressure Systems Regulations 2000, The Lifting Operations & Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER) and the Provision & Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 and needs regulating under Health & Safety. Tracking these items not only delivers great benefit to clinical staff in reducing time spent finding the equipment but also assists the Trust in meeting its Health & Safety obligations by ensuring equipment is available for inspection and testing at the required times. Typically, an NHS Trust will have bariatric equipment assets totalling more than £250,000. With proper management this total value can be reduced, even as the demand increases.

Airbed Mattresses

The provision and management of airbed mattresses can be major issue for NHS Trusts. When RFID is used to track mattresses around the hospital it automatically records when mattresses leave the clean store area and monitors where they are in use. By using systems such as ResourceView to track airbed mattresses helps improve efficiency and patient safety especially for NHS Trusts running their own mattress scheme. In addition location records can be used to verify that the correct cleaning regime is followed in compliance with infection control requirements. This is the case whether the Trust uses third party cleaning off site or has its own onsite cleaning facilities.

The use of call buttons to indicate when a mattress is no longer required can further improve efficiency. For Trusts who rent mattresses, automatic notifications can be sent directly to rental companies, thereby avoiding unnecessary rental charges. Rental costs for a standard mattress averages £70 per week and can be considerably more for specialist mattresses. Therefore avoiding unnecessary rental can save thousands of pounds in revenue each year.

Temperature Monitoring

Hospitals and laboratories have a need to monitor fridges and freezers that store blood or drug products in order to meet MHRA guidelines, or gain Clinical Pathology Accreditation (CPA). Combining temperature monitoring with a wireless LAN based real time location system provides new possibilities. The system can be rapidly deployed as there is no need to install wiring and an additional benefit is that coverage can be provided to fridges in remote locations. As the technology also has a local data storage facility, temperature probes can be used to monitor blood or drug products whilst they are in transit.

Temperature probes, deployed by companies like Airetrak, can be calibrated to UKAS standards as the system enables regular recalibration. Correctly storing blood and drug products is not only a regulatory requirement and a clear benefit to patient care by reducing the risk of administering contaminated products but also avoiding the financial cost of replacing spoiled products if wrongly stored.