Mitigate Risk With Asset Tracking

By Ken Congdon, Integrated Solutions magazine

Establishing a surefire way to track vital business assets can not only help an organization improve inventory control, reduce labor and asset costs, and comply with customer mandates — in some instances, quite literally, it can be a matter of life and death. For example, picture a hospital where a patient loses the ability to breathe on their own and needs to be placed on a ventilator to survive. That hospital not only needs to ensure it can quickly locate a ventilator for the patient in need, but it also needs to ensure that this ventilator has been properly serviced to ensure it doesn't malfunction during use, compromising the patient's condition. This scenario is a challenge hospitals all over the world face on a daily basis, and one Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS) has recently chosen to address by implementing a Wi-Fi-based RTLS.

MANUAL TRACKING COMPROMISES SAFETY, PRODUCTIVITY
With more than 23 hospitals serving 5,000 licensed beds, CHS is the third largest public healthcare system in the United States. Like many healthcare organizations, CHS historically tracked its critical medical equipment for patient care (e.g. infusion pumps, ventilators, intra-aortic balloon pumps, etc.) manually. When new equipment was purchased, basic product information (e.g. serial number, warranty information) was entered into CHS' inventory tracking system, and a service log was created. Once logged, the equipment was distributed where needed throughout CHS' facilities.