Louisiana Medical Center uses real-time positioning system to improve asset management efficiency
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A few years ago, the material management staff at Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center (OLOL) in Louisiana received at least one e-mail message from the emergency room or a phone call a day, all looking for medical equipment ( Such as IV pumps), used for patient care or replacement of lost equipment. The medical center has 600 IV pumps, but it is still difficult to find in an emergency.
To solve this problem, OLOL installed a real-time location system (RTLS), called Skytron Asset Manager (SAM), provided by Awarepoint. Allyn Whaley-Martin, OLOL’s security director, said that since the system was tested in December 2009, email messages and phone calls have basically ceased.
Before this medical center adopted a real-time positioning system, its staff had trouble locating equipment, not only to locate the IV pump, but also to locate other assets in several buildings. These mobile devices, such as special beds, stretchers, wheelchairs, and IV pumps, are usually moved between floors of hospital buildings or between adjacent medical office buildings. Whaley-Martin said: “We have 20 to 25 assets, which are expensive and difficult to find when moving between departments.” In addition, she said, the hospital rents some equipment as needed, and the time spent in the hospital often exceeds The time required is simply because no one knows the location of these devices.
Whaley-Martin said: “In the beginning, the shortage of IV pumps prompted us to introduce a real-time positioning system.” Due to the shortage, the hospital has purchased IV pumps several times, but in fact, there are still stocks in the hospital’s inventory. Moreover, the hospital is working hard to solve the equipment maintenance problem to ensure that the equipment will not miss the scheduled maintenance period because it cannot be found. Maintenance personnel often had to search the entire hospital for equipment to be maintained, and a small part of the equipment was missing because it could not be located.
The Awarepoint system uses 2.4 GHz active RFID tags, which conform to the ZigBee standard. So far, the hospital has tagged 5,000 assets, of which more than 4,000 assets were tagged in March 2010, and another 1,000 assets were tagged in the last month. All assets are now tracked by a reader covering an area of 800,000 square feet. The tracking range includes every floor of the hospital and the lower two-story corridor of the adjacent medical office building.
The system was developed by Covington Medical Systems, a Skytron distributor in Mandeville, Louisiana. Covington Medical Systems installed an RFID reader at approximately every 750 square feet. These readers are called ZigBee sensors or access points and plug directly into power outlets. Each sensor can read the ID number of any tag nearby (the system provides room-level coverage). The sensor can transmit this ID number and its own number, and other access points can receive it. These transmissions are finally collected by the bridge, and the data is sent to the Awarepoint server through the cable connection.
Bill Robertson, president of Covington Medical Systems, said the company installs a bridge at approximately every 10,000 square feet. Valerie Fritz, senior vice president of marketing for Awarepoint, said that the servers hosted by Awarepoint run Skytron’s Asset Manager software, which manages data about asset locations, and allows reports and alerts to be sent. Awarepoint tags can also send and receive data with other tags. The system can accurately locate the location of each tag within about 3 meters. Employees can obtain data on the Awarepoint server, enter keywords or asset ID numbers to find assets, and then see an icon representing this asset on the hospital building plan. Users can also use the system to find a certain type of asset in a specific location in the hospital.
Whaley-Martin said that since the SAM system is installed, there is no need to purchase additional IV pumps. The biomedical department of this hospital is now able to perform preventive equipment maintenance, which is much faster than before the system was installed.
Whaley-Martin said: “The emergency room can now find the pump equipment they need.” In addition, when the inventory level of specific medical equipment (equipment in the emergency room and post-operative recovery room) drops to a low level, it will trigger The alert sends information to the relevant personnel. For example, if there are only a few IV pumps left in the emergency room, an alert will be sent to the material management department to indicate that the number of equipment is low. The personnel of the material management department can use this system to find the IV pumps in the hospital, and then assign them to the places where the equipment is lacking.
Whaley-Martin reported that the hospital staff quickly adjusted to use the system. There are hardly any complaints from employees now. The only complaint is that we haven’t labeled all the items in the hospital.
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