If you are a local area hospital administrator that dreams of being a Big Brother, you can already install a system with a “panic button” for locating hospital staff (pictured), and
soon will be able to have “location-aware” IV pumps, all courtesy of Ekahau, Inc.
The Real-Time Location System (RTLS) from Ekahau, a Saratoga, California company, has already been chosen by Tuusula Hospital in Finland, Arras Central Hospital in Northern France and Mayores Hospital in Calhorra, Spain, to monitor their staff. Eisenhower Army Medical Center has selected Ekahau to wirelessly track hospital assets.
The technology:
The Ekahau Real-Time Location System is a wireless radio frequency solution that continually monitors and reports real-time locations of tracked resources. Unlike competing solutions which are based on Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) technology, Bluetooth or active RFID, and therefore require deployment of costly RF- antennas or receivers, Ekahau’s patented RF modelling technology leverages standard Wi-Fi access points, so no proprietary infrastructure is needed. By using standard 802.11 access points and Wi-Fi tags, any Wi-Fi network can now work as the backbone and sensor network for a real-time location system. This quickly translates into faster deployment and improved cost-effectiveness.
Ekahau RTLS solutions let hospitals and other healthcare organizations synchronize workflows, reduce inventories, and increase patient throughput. At the same time quality of care, staff satisfaction and safety are remarkably improved. Thanks to more efficient operations and resource management, operational costs can be significantly reduced.
Ekahau enables the following benefits to key healthcare applications:
– Emergency management – more efficient and faster emergency response
– Patient monitoring – better patient safety and increased throughput
– Workflow management – better staff utilization and increased patient throughput
– Equipment management – reduced need for inventory
– Information delivery – improved workflow, reduced errors
– Billing support & verification – improved revenue capture
Company’s main page…