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Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center uses passive UHF tags to track more than 850 vests, making the inspection process more efficient. The center plans to promote the commercialization of this technology.
X-ray protective vest positioning inspection and maintenance is a difficult task, and this facility can solve this problem. The facility includes passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) RFID tags, a handheld reader and software to manage the location of the vest and check data. The radioactive vest is sewn into the label so that it can be read by the system at a distance of 20 feet. The management team developed the system to check the status and position of the vest and improve efficiency.
The medical center is located in Winston-Salem.NC and has adopted radio frequency identification technology for a variety of purposes. Ronald Noel said. He is the manager of this center and has participated in the development of multiple RFID systems. He cited, for example, that the technology was initially used in many real-time positioning systems to track assets in 2005. In 2009, the technology was used to track vaccines stored in refrigerators and freezers and locate assets within 4.1 million square feet.
Called Pulse Finder RFID Enhanced (Pulse Finder RFID Enhanced), this solution was conceived by radiological equipment manager Stuart Grogan. He said that for more than 850 vests, he was tired of the previous time-consuming positioning and maintenance.
The joint committee requires that the radiation vest be inspected at least once a year. In order to achieve this goal, radiological workers must check electronic forms to determine which vests should be inspected and label them. This requires traveling through as many as 30-40 storage locations-some of which are even located in different buildings-because the vest does not always stay in a certain location. The staff then checked each vest and recorded the information on the electronic form.
According to the medical center, the pulse search RFID enhancement makes the process more efficient. The software launched by ScanOnline, an automatic identification solution provider located in Albemarle, NC, was loaded into the Motorola MC3190-Z handheld reader. The device has a WIFI access port to connect to an on-board computer, where the car is used to monitor the surrounding conditions. As an independent system, the pulse search software runs on a computer that stores all vest-related data.
Each vest has a passive UHF Gen2 tag, either sewn in by Pulse Medical Inc., a vest manufacturer in Blue Ridge, Ga., or installed by a medical center. An inspector carries a handheld reader through the rack in each vest storage area, and the reader can interrogate tags within a range of 20 feet. If the ID number is received, the pulse search software will access the maintenance records of each vest and indicate which vest should be inspected.
The staff moves the vest that needs to be checked to a special room for visual inspection. They answer a series of questions in the software of the handheld device and fill in the necessary information in the “comment” option. Then these data are forwarded back to the notebook through the WIFI interface, which is convenient for updating the information of the vest.
Since it was installed in January 2013, Noel said the system has saved the department a considerable amount of time previously used for positioning and inspection. However, he pointed out that it has not been possible to accurately measure the degree of savings so far, because early inspections also require unmarked vests to be tagged. Grogan predicts that the solution will save the medical center about $15,000 in the next five years, mainly labor costs. He added that it is more important that it will provide accurate data records for each vest and then submit it to the inspectors of the joint committee.
Pulse Medical Inc. has a partnership with Wake Forest Innovations (the commercial enterprise of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center). It is currently marketing this program to other health care providers. “I think this will be a very valuable option for hospitals,” said Gordy Boyce, Pulse Medical’s vice president of marketing. “This technology adds value to the vest, and this is Pulse Medical’s biggest gain.”
According to Noel, Wake Forest Innovations has applied for a patent for this solution. He said the technology can be used in other assets besides radiation vests, such as clinical equipment that requires frequent calibration.
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