RFID implementation for Hospital Equipment Management
Submitted by jeffrey on Tue, 2007-04-03 03:41.
Tags: Equipment management | health care | Hospital
Most of us who are not associated with health care industry have little idea about how complex is it to manage a hospital. Even if we had been to a hospital for treatments little do we realize how difficult it is to manage it. Even a medium sized hospital will have tens of surgeons, resident doctors, nurses and probably a hundred other support staff. Then there are a host of different equipments used at different places in the hospital. Some of these are used in operation theatres; some are installed alongside patient’s bed, some in coroner’s office, and some in test laboratories and so on. Most hospitals have practice to have a central storage of equipments and have an elaborate check in/check out process for managing usage of equipments. But often this process is skipped and equipments are used randomly. This is also partly due to the nature of the work which hospital does. For instance, during an emergency the whole process is given a skip.
Scotland’s Royal Alexander Hospital too has a similar scene. Often staff would be seen searching for equipments. They had elaborate equipment libraries to keep a track on various equipments across various wards in the hospital. They also maintained a sizeable staff to track and manage equipment movements. Also some wards would get in habit of hoarding equipments. Finding instantly the exact location of equipment always remained a challenge for the hospital staff.
The management of the hospital took a serious note of this problem. This problem has a potential to impact the treatment of a patient. What if the staff was unable to find suitable equipment in case of an emergency or patient’s health worsening rapidly? It installed RFID readers at several points in a ward and at the entrances. Locations which had maximum density of equipments were covered in this experimental RFID network. With the network in place, equipment movements were captured in this area. The team also tested if the RFID tag frequency interfered with working of any equipment. Active 433 MHz tags were used. The results of this 5 month long trial were highly encouraging and now the hospital plans to include more wards like the emergency ward in this cover.
Technorati Tags: Equipment management# health care# Hospital# #
Tags: Equipment management | health care | Hospital
Modern day hospitals
Most of us who are not associated with health care industry have little idea about how complex is it to manage a hospital. Even if we had been to a hospital for treatments little do we realize how difficult it is to manage it. Even a medium sized hospital will have tens of surgeons, resident doctors, nurses and probably a hundred other support staff. Then there are a host of different equipments used at different places in the hospital. Some of these are used in operation theatres; some are installed alongside patient’s bed, some in coroner’s office, and some in test laboratories and so on. Most hospitals have practice to have a central storage of equipments and have an elaborate check in/check out process for managing usage of equipments. But often this process is skipped and equipments are used randomly. This is also partly due to the nature of the work which hospital does. For instance, during an emergency the whole process is given a skip.
The Royal Alexander hospital
Scotland’s Royal Alexander Hospital too has a similar scene. Often staff would be seen searching for equipments. They had elaborate equipment libraries to keep a track on various equipments across various wards in the hospital. They also maintained a sizeable staff to track and manage equipment movements. Also some wards would get in habit of hoarding equipments. Finding instantly the exact location of equipment always remained a challenge for the hospital staff.
The solution
The management of the hospital took a serious note of this problem. This problem has a potential to impact the treatment of a patient. What if the staff was unable to find suitable equipment in case of an emergency or patient’s health worsening rapidly? It installed RFID readers at several points in a ward and at the entrances. Locations which had maximum density of equipments were covered in this experimental RFID network. With the network in place, equipment movements were captured in this area. The team also tested if the RFID tag frequency interfered with working of any equipment. Active 433 MHz tags were used. The results of this 5 month long trial were highly encouraging and now the hospital plans to include more wards like the emergency ward in this cover.
RFID has not only resulted in better management of the equipments but also in better care of the patients.
Technorati Tags: Equipment management# health care# Hospital# #