Indraprastha Apollo Delhi Hospital ICU ward uses RFID to track assets equipment
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Indraprastha Apollo Delhi Hospital’s ICU ward is using a passive UHF RFID system to track asset movements. The asset management solution is provided by Dolphin RFID, which can identify the location of specific equipment in the ICU ward. In the next step, the hospital will use RFID technology to help employees determine when the equipment was last maintained during equipment maintenance. This stage is expected to be installed in the second half of the year.
Indraprastha Apollo, a subsidiary of Indraprastha Medical Group (IMC), operates 64 different hospitals in 9 countries, with 10,000 beds, 2,200 pharmacies and 100 primary care clinics. Indraprastha Apollo Delhi Hospital is the second largest hospital in the city, with 795 beds and an area of 600,000 square feet. The hospital has 52 professional and ICU beds. There are 8 different specialties in the ICU ward, and the hospital wants to gain visibility into the inventory of equipment so that employees can find specific items more quickly. In some cases, some first-aid equipment will be moved from different ICU departments, which also brings some trouble in finding the equipment.
(Near the ceiling of the ICU ward, the hospital installed a reader entrance with a built-in ThingMagic Astra-EX reader, and sent RFID data to the server software via WiFi)
Ashoke Chakrabartty, senior general manager of biomedical engineering at Indraprastha Medical Group, said: “Hospitals need to quickly find the medical equipment they need. We plan to use RFID technology to track and find key medical equipment.” Chakrabartty, who is responsible for the procurement of technical equipment for IMC hospitals, found that, It is very difficult to find a positioning solution provider that meets all the requirements of the hospital. He explained: “There are many challenges in using RFID technology in this country, and not many people are familiar with such applications.”
Since hundreds of readers or thousands of WiFi tags will put a huge load on the network, Chakrabartty prefers not to deploy active RFID tags that use existing WiFi networks. In addition, due to the huge number of assets, the cost of active RFID tags cannot be underestimated.
In the end, Apollo chose a Dolphin solution that uses passive UHF tags to track devices. These tags will not cause a greater load on existing WiFi facilities. The hospital has installed four reader entrances, each with a ThingMagic Astra-EX reader with integrated antenna. Suresh Sawhney, President and CEO of Dolphin RFID, stated that the hospital does not want to use cables to connect these readers. Therefore, Dolphin installed a WLAN indoor access point.
After the reader was installed, the hospital found that WiFi throughput had dropped, and finally worked with Dolphin to solve this problem. Chakrabartty pointed out: “Even if the network throughput drops only a little, the reader may be disconnected, and we must restart.” Although this problem has been solved, in the long run, the hospital needs to create an independent high-speed Wi-Fi network to improve the stability of data transmission.
In the morning of this year, the project conducted a proof of concept in 8 ICU wards of two hospitals. After 4 weeks of trial operation, the system was also deployed in other ICUs. In the evening of this month, Apollo Gleneagles Hospital in Kolkata will also conduct a trial operation.
Metal passive UHF tags provided by third-party companies are used on 300 medical equipment in the hospital. The ID number of each tag binds the relevant information of the device. After the four readers in the ICU ward read the tag ID, the Dolphin Edge Wizard will explain it and transmit the relevant information to the hospital management software.
The staff can use the Edge Wizard software to check the last reading position of the device to determine its location. This technology can save staff time, but the hospital has not yet evaluated this.
(Indraprastha Apollo Delhi Hospital is the second largest hospital in the city)
The system can also be used in conjunction with the Dolphin Android handheld reader, and the hospital plans to officially use it in the near future. After checking the area where the device is located, employees can use a handheld reader running Dolphin Android firmware to locate the item. Employees can also view warnings and related maintenance information on the reader.
In addition, the equipment maintenance staff can read the maintenance tag through a handheld reader and enter the service information they provide.
Chakrabartty said that the RFID system has brought a lot of help to hospital equipment tracking. They will also provide a lot of help for preventive maintenance.
Chakrabartty said: “If the first phase of the project runs well, we plan to deploy in all hospital facilities.”
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