Setting a New Standard for Asset Tracking
A look at a promising new technology designed for hospital use
By Kevin Swank
Spot is the latest technology from InnerWireless, a company that provides wireless solutions to healthcare, enterprise, and government entities. Spot is a real-time location system (RTLS) that enables healthcare organizations to improve patient safety and hospital productivity by quickly and accurately locating and optimizing the use of valuable medical equipment and other healthcare assets. Some reports have found that hospitals over-purchase equipment by 50%, and about 30 minutes per employee per shift is spent looking for lost or misplaced equipment. Spot's high-assurance, room-level location service allows hospital staff to quickly locate necessary assets and spend more time caring for patients, which translates into improved patient workflow.
Spot is an active system oriented toward real-time, room-level tracking of assets, whereas passive RFID systems typically rely on static readers to detect tags that often must be within inches of the reader. Spot uses a new architecture based on a configuration of master radios, beacons, and tags. This approach – completely wireless and able to track items down to the room level – stands in stark contrast to many RFID and 802.11-based systems (using access points), which can provide only zone-level approximations of location.
Many RFID systems require a lengthy installation process that involves pulling numerous cables and cords. Most of the Spot infrastructure is customer installable, so ease of installation is high and cost is kept to a minimum. Virtually no data or power cables are pulled in the Spot infrastructure, making installation simple and fast, while minimizing infection control issues in the healthcare setting. Additionally, Spot scales seamlessly without major cost breakpoints, so an organization can install the system and add tags when, where, and how it wants.
Another important difference between Spot and many of its RFID competitors is that it is IT-friendly. That is, Spot is a secure system that minimizes touch points on the enterprise LAN. Spot operates on the 802.15.4 standard, a low-powered network that does not interfere with 802.11 applications. With a typical RFID or 802.11 approach, an organization's IT staff can become overwhelmed with trying to manage every device, proliferation of IP addresses, and bandwidth issues when there are too many devices operating on one wireless network. By using the 802.15.4 standard, Spot avoids impacting an existing and already busy 802.11 network with additional traffic and congestion. The low power nature of the system also helps promote very long battery life for the system tags and beacons (up to seven years).
Spot's web-based user interface is easy to use and is accessible anywhere in the hospital. The actual hospital floor plan is displayed in the browser, and the zoom feature allows the user to see very detailed information. By placing the cursor on or near an icon, more details are given. For example, Spot may tell the user what five assets are in room 6013. Because many RFID solutions only can identify the zone in which an asset is located, hospital staff must still manually search for equipment within a given area.
And, unlike some RFID solutions, Spot provides a standards-based XML/SOAP application programming interface (API), which allows for the simple and seamless integration of location information in higher-level applications, such as asset management, staff workflow, emergency department information systems, nurse call, bed management, and ADT applications. Organizations can take full advantage of Spot's third-party integration capabilities and standards-based features to create a safer, more productive environment.
Spot was commercially released in January 2007. Prior to this and during the beta testing phase, Vassar Brothers Medical Center in Poughkeepsie, NY, tracked and located IV pumps so that the hospital could gain a thorough understanding of how equipment moved throughout the facility. IV pumps need to be located quickly for patient care purposes, but they also need to be found quickly for maintenance, repairs, and sterilization, all of which is hard to do when clinicians hide and hoard the equipment so they have items available for their patients. During the beta test, the IV pump manufacturer executed a mandatory equipment upgrade. Spot allowed a single hospital employee to find hundreds of IV pumps within a matter of hours, where it previously took weeks to locate a full inventory of equipment. The more efficient use and availability of assets leads to significant productivity improvements, which results in more time spent caring for patients and less time spent searching for assets. In addition, Vassar Brothers realized a 10%-20% reduction in asset purchases. Spot's practical, low-power technology provided Vassar Brothers with a measurable and almost immediate ROI, which led them to incorporate Spot as a permanent part of their IT strategy.
While RFID and Spot share the goal of asset tracking, Spot goes a step further by minimizing common problems that its RFID competitors face. Spot's accurate room-level location capabilities, unique design, easy installation, IT-friendly co-existence with 802.11-based networks, simple user interface, and seamless integration with third-party applications make it a reliable, affordable, and highly effective asset tracking solution.
Kevin Swank is the Director of Product Marketing at InnerWireless. He can be reached at kswank@innerwireless.com.
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