Boston Hospital BWH fully realizes real-time positioning and tracking of equipment
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With the end of the one-month pilot project, Boston Brigham and Women Hospital (BWH) has taken its RFID active tracking system application to a new level. The 747-bed non-profit teaching hospital affiliated to Harvard Medical School has installed Radianse’s real-time positioning system on 17 floors and plans to extend the system to neighboring institutions in the spring of this year.
A total of 8,000 sets of medical equipment will be tagged and their location will be tracked by the timely positioning system. These devices include infusion pumps, continuous venous hemodialysis machines, and pulse oximetry.
Radianse active RFID tags operate at 433 MHz and communicate with Radianse through a dedicated air interface protocol. A small box-shaped receiver is usually installed on the wall to communicate with BWH’s wireless local area network and forward the collected RFID data to the Radianse server. The communication distance between the receiver and the tag is up to 50 or 60 feet, and the accurate range for locating objects is 3 feet. When 3 or more receivers receive the ID number of the tag, the Radianse software determines the location of the device based on the strength of the signal.
Employees can pinpoint the location of the device on the computer
The emergency department, operating room and cardiac care room of BWH hospital, the nursing room before and after the operation and the general area all use this system.
The hospital first adopted this Radianse system in 2005. During the nine-month trial period, Radianse’s chief operating officer, Steve Schiefen, stated that BWH has labelled a total of 350 devices in five categories of medical devices. So far, Michael Fraai, the director of biomedical engineering at the hospital, said that BWH’s labeling equipment has reached more than 4,000 pieces.
The bar number printed on the surface of each RFID paper label is the same as the ID number of the RFID chip embedded in the label. Employees stick RFID tags on the equipment, and then use a handheld barcode scanner to record the barcode numbers of the tags. Through the barcode reader, employees can be 100% sure that this device currently corresponds to the ID number of the tag.
When the bar code of the label is scanned, the detailed information of the labeled device, such as the manufacturer, model and location-most of this information can be obtained from the hospital’s inventory management system-is entered and stored in the Radianse system.
According to Fraai, the system has improved the quality of patient care services, speeded up the flow of patients, and saved hospital expenses. Employees can enter the Radianse application on a nearby computer and select the devices that have been screened. The software then locates the device and displays the location information of the device, specifically to a certain room.
The hospital is now collecting these application data, hoping to determine how many devices need to be kept in the inventory, including which devices can be rented out. Using real-time positioning data, the hospital can get the location of the equipment at any time.
With this historical data, the hospital can track the frequency of use of each device and determine which method is more cost-effective to buy or rent the device.
In addition, Fraai added that the hospital hopes that the adoption of the positioning system can prevent the phenomenon of missing equipment.
BWH estimates that the real-time positioning system can save $300,000 per year. The system tested in 2005 has recovered its investment cost within 15 months, and Fraai expects the cost of this system to be recovered within three years.
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