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Virtua Health, a New Jersey medical company, installed GE Healthcare’s RFID systems in its four hospitals to track thousands of patients and staff, and up to 10,000 assets. Through this system, Virtua can know the number and location of free beds in real time, so as to better manage the patient admission process; real-time understanding of the asset location can help the company improve work efficiency and use RFID data to analyze which processes need to be improved.
The two companies have a history of cooperation, said Alfred Campanella, Virtua’s chief information officer. Since 2000, GE Healthcare has been providing Virtua Health with six sigma and lean guidance management, as well as CAT scanners and MRI equipment.
In the next 6 months, Virtua will begin to use a GE system-AgileTrac Enterprise-to track patients and assets. The system consists of active 433MHz RFID tags, readers, infrared transmitters and software for managing tag data. Track equipment, patients and employees, manage assets, patient rooms and emergency rooms.
Virtua Health owns more than 10,000 movable assets, including wheelchairs, infusion pumps, OR equipment and beds. Hospitals’ attempts to quickly locate lost infusion pumps often cause chaos-not to mention the wasted cost of replacing equipment that does not require replacement.
Virtua is also concerned about bed management issues. When a patient enters the emergency room of a hospital, for example, the hospital needs to locate free beds. When a patient is discharged from the hospital between 10 AM and 4 PM, the hospital needs to know the status of each bed in order to allocate a new patient from the emergency room to a free bed. AgileTrac will help manage this process, Campanella said.
The system uses a combination of RFID and infrared technology, said Fran Dirksmeier, general manager of GE Healthcare AgileTrac Solutions. The AgileTrac battery-powered 433 MHz RFID tag has an embedded infrared receiver. The tag can be placed on the asset, and the patient wears a wristband with the tag.
Virtua installed an infrared transmitter in the middle of the ceiling of each room in the four hospitals. The transmitter emits an infrared signal with a unique ID code. If a tagged asset or an individual enters a room, the tag captures the signal from the infrared transmitter in the room, and then sends the transmitter ID code and tag ID code to the RFID reading in the corridor through a 433 MHz signal using a proprietary air interface protocol Device. These readers are wired to the hospital’s back-end system. The system’s AgileTrac software compiles the tag location based on the ID code of the infrared transmitter and the strength of the RFID signal, and marks the location on the hospital platform map-each button represents each tag.
Although the system can determine the location of the tag based on the strength of the RFID signal alone, the ID of the infrared transmitter can help improve accuracy. This information will be displayed on the PC screen of the nurse or manager and the flat TV in the corridor. TV will display the identification code and location of each patient, such as ward, examination room or imaging room.
Initially, Campanella stated that each patient will wear two types of wristbands-one is the hospital’s traditional barcode wristband with a personal identification number printed on it, which is read during the patient’s hospital stay; the other is the AgileTrac label wristband, which contains Unique ID code, without any identifying information printed on the surface. The staff also wear AgileTrac tags so that the hospital can know their location so that they can quickly locate relevant personnel when needed, or determine who can respond to emergency calls the fastest. The employee’s tag is hung under the neck with a tether, he said. The hospital will eventually discard the barcode label and integrate the barcode and print information into the AgileTrac wristband.
When a patient is admitted to the hospital for the first time and assigned to a ward, he or she receives an AgileTrac wristband, and the hospital staff will enter the estimated time of discharge in the AgileTrac system. If the patient stays in hospital longer than expected, the system will send an alert. On the other hand, if the system detects that the patient has been discharged from the hospital within a predetermined period of time, it sends an alert to the cleaning staff. Campanella says this system will help manage patients and beds.
The AgileTrac system software of the Virtua Health server will be integrated with the hospital admission system and electronic medical record software. In this way, the admission data record of each patient and the medical service information received during the patient’s hospitalization will correspond to the unique ID code of the tag. The AgileTrac system software has four modes: equipment management, bed or room management, operating room and emergency room. Authorized users can determine the location of assets in any mode, just open a logo plan, or use the search function to enter the name of the required equipment.
Initially, the first hospital will use 4,000 asset tags, 1,500 patient tags, 38 RFID readers and 283 infrared transmitters. The second hospital will use 1,500 asset tags, 500 patient tags, 16 readers and 177 transmitters. Finally, the fourth hospital will use 4,000 asset tags, 2,000 patient tags, 52 readers and 416 transmitters.
Because this system can help Virtua better understand the location and discharge time of patients, Campanella said that the system is expected to increase the hospital’s patient throughput, locate the required equipment in time, reduce costs, and ultimately improve the patient experience.
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