Wi-Fi Tracking and Wi-Fi Temperature Monitoring in Healthcare

Healthcare

UK NHS Trusts today face increasing financial pressures, government regulatory mandates, an ongoing need for improved use of staff time, a requirement of patient and staff safety, and a mission critical focus on patient care.

Airetrak’s Wi-Fi Tracking and Wi-Fi Temperature Monitoring solutions are helping many NHS Trusts gain the visibility and control over resources that they need to save money, save time and improve the patient experience. Airetrak is the leader in providing Wi-Fi based asset location and temperature monitoring solutions for the UK NHS.

Built exclusively for healthcare, Airetrak provides a number of specific solutions to address many of the problems faced in UK hospitals around visibility and management of key resources. Built around a core flexible location platform, ResourceView, these solutions can be easily adapted to local hospital processes to achieve real improvements in efficiency and productivity. The core solutions include:

• Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM): Hospital Biomedical equipment, such as infusion pumps and syringe drivers, typically require preventative maintenance every 3, 6 or 12 months. ResourceView allows EBME and Clinical Engineering staff to locate this equipment across the hospital and perform maintenance within the contracted timeframe, helping to improve equipment availability and utilisation and improve patient safety.
   
• Equipment Library Automation: Hospitals that operate equipment libraries often find equipment is taken without being logged during overnight/unmanned periods. ResourceView allows automation of the library, allowing visibility of stock levels and generation of alerts when equipment is taken or stock falls below certain levels
   
• Wi-Fi Temperature Monitoring: Hospitals are required to monitor the temperature that blood and drug products are stored at, and retain the data. ResourceView offers a comprehensive temperature management solution for fixed fridges or freezers, in specialist departments or on wards. The solution is designed to help Trusts meet EU and MHRA guidelines, to improve patient safety.
   
• Asset Management: The ResourceView solution helps improve the utilisation of existing assets by providing usage information to optimise procurement decisions. It helps improving rental management through the use of tag call buttons to indicate end of rental periods and to help the hire company locate the asset. Call buttons on the tags can be used to notify when a bed is cleaned and available. Theft can be reduced through motion sensors, exciters and alerts to notify when an asset is being taken. All of these can reduce annual equipment purchase and equipment rental costs.
   
• Locating High Value/Capital Assets: Hospitals can often have a small number of high value assets which are difficult to find when needed. ResourceView provides a Proximity search to allow Nurses and other clinical staff to find the assets that are closest to them. Locating equipment such as specialist bariatric beds, or gas cylinders required by an anesthetist is made fast and simple by using the system.
   
• Patient Workflow: Knowing the location of patients, medical equipment, clinical staff and available beds can be essential to improving the patient care and resulting average patient stay. Tracking patients through A&E, for example, can provide information on patient bottlenecks that may be affecting patient flow throughput, such as Radiology. Identifying of these bottlenecks allows focus on the area to improve overall patient throughput and allow service levels to be met.
   
• Patient Safety: ResourceView provides the ability to alert when at-risk patients (mental health, dementia etc) wander out of predefined areas or post certain chokepoints. Call buttons on the tags can be used a panic alarms to alert in an emergency/crash situation, or when staff in A&E are attacked, for example. All of these can improve both patient and staff safety.
   
• Blood/Pharmaceuticals Management: high value drugs often have an expiry date and need to be stored within a certain temperature ranges. Using the Wi-Fi tags and with ResourceView allows the location to be monitored and alerts to b generated if the drug temperature goes outside a preset range. Similarly with blood, having alerts generated if blood is stored at room temperature for more than ½ hour can reduce adverse incidents and improve patient safety.

Airetrak ResourceView provides extensive tailoring to individual user groups such as EBME/Clinical Engineering, Doctors and Nurses, Theatre Management, Pharmacy, Phlebotomy, Porters etc. These

• improve patient safety
• improve patient care
• increase through-put of patients
• reduce equipment costs through improved equipment utilisation
• improve staff productivity and morale
• ensure key assets can be located when needed.
• ensure the right patients are in the right place for the right procedures.
• locate key staff such as doctors in an emergency.
• locate assets due for maintenance.