Healthcare

Healthcare providers must continuously improve operational efficiency to provide high levels of service while keeping escalating costs under control. RTLS and RFID technology provide real-time visibility of medical equipment, medical supplies, lab samples, along with real-time location of patients and staff to improve the efficiency, safety and quality of patient care.

Hospitals and Primary Care Facilities

Tracking medical equipment and supplies across a large medical facility can be challenging. A missing infusion pump, ventilator or wheelchair leaves patients waiting, disrupts staff scheduling, and incurs extra costs when redundant equipment needs to be rented or purchased. RFID-based Equipment Tracking enables staff to immediately locate assets as needed and receive alerts when equipment needs to be serviced or calibrated – saving capital asset costs, improving asset utilization, enhancing patient safety, and freeing up staff to focus on patient care.

Medical supplies are placed in multiple inventory stores within a medical facility for ease of access. This distributed inventory can create replenishment challenges, redundancies, product waste and potential safety risks from expired supplies. RFID-based Cycle Counting improves the availability of consumables and medication while reducing overall costs from rush orders, excess inventory and expired medications.

OAT is helping a US-based primary care provider to automatically locate supplies & specialized equipment across its network of medical centers and clinics with RFID and RTLS technology.

 

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Providers

Routine maintenance activities are difficult to schedule into an emergency services operation. To ensure medical transport vehicles have a full complement of equipment and supplies at all times, documentation, inventory and fleet management processes can be automated with Auto-ID technology. RFID-based Equipment Tracking and Cycle Counting enable EMS providers to instantly verify and restock an ambulance's contents, maximizing the time the vehicle is in service.

OAT automated inventory management for a regional EMS ambulance fleet. With RFID, an ambulance's medical supplies and equipment inventory can be verified and stocked in less than 2 minutes – a process that historically took hours to complete.

 

Laboratories, Blood Banks and Donation Centers

Ancillary service providers can also improve operational efficiency with Auto-ID technology. RFID-based Equipment Tracking enables personnel to immediately locate assets as needed and receive alerts when equipment needs to be serviced or calibrated – improving asset utilization and reducing the need for redundant spare equipment to fill in for equipment under repair.

Laboratories, Blood Banks and Donation Centers manage large volumes of medical samples at controlled temperatures. In sub-zero storage conditions, frost and condensation can make specimen labels difficult to read. RFID-based Sample Tracking reduces labor costs and errors associated with manual barcode scanning, and provides consistent location data to ensure rapid turnaround time and patient safety.

RFID and RTLS in Hospitals – Applications and Use Cases

OAT real-time enabled distribution processes for a Life Sciences company, enabling them to track millions of perishable, time-sensitive medical specimens across multiple testing facilities and delivery vehicles.

 

	OAT SOLUTIONS SUPPORT: Barcode - Passive RFID - Active RFID - Ultra Wide Band RF (UWB) - Wi-Fi - RTLS - RFID-enhanced EAS - Location Servers - GPS - Application Sensors (e.g. Stack Lights, PLCs, alarms...)