Healthcare

RFID ASSET TRACKING and LOCATION

Improving Patient Care by Optimizing Asset Visibility

In the pressure-filled environment that dominates the healthcare industry, hospitals are striving to improve patient care while controlling costs. The ability to pursue these seemingly opposite objectives can be enhanced by optimizing the use of medical equipment and automating appropriate business processes. Healthcare equipment is constantly on the move as it is shared among floors, returned for maintenance and cleaning, and put back into service. RF Code and its partners deliver asset tracking solutions for healthcare which automate procedures and increase the utilization of the assets which contribute to real-world savings. We help hospitals improve patient care and billing accuracy by facilitating the real-time management of medical assets. With nearly a decade of success in the development of active RFID asset tracking solutions, RF Codes patented technology has been deployed at major medical facilities to maximize the utilization of both owned and leased equipment, optimize patient flow and enable real-time decision making. RF Code provides award-winning technology designed to integrate easily into todays healthcare information management systems. Our high performance products operate at 433 MHz and do not interfere with legacy data networks or medical equipment.

Each year, a typical hospital writes off up to 4% of its inventory as lost, misplaced, broken or otherwise unaccounted for an unwelcome set of circumstances fraught with expense and risk. Perhaps more significantly, up to 30% of a facilitys equipment is not in the active or available pool of assets for caregivers to use at any given time. These operationally invisible assets often grow from common internal shrinkage issues like hoarding, inappropriate staging levels, incomplete inventories and misplacements.

Transportation of patients is often inefficient, involving dispatchers, escorts, and medical staff. Equipment must be located quickly. The problem is more severe in emergency departments, where patient flow can create bottlenecks and idle skilled professionals at high cost. When preparing for surgery, staff members spend time searching for equipment, interrupting the planning processes and keeping patients, staff and specialized equipment idle.

ASSET TRACKING and LOCATION for HEALTHCARE More Challenges ...

As healthcare organizations migrate voice communications and sensitive patient data to wireless networks, most will discover the value in establishing a separate, dedicated wireless infrastructure for asset tracking. Avoiding a new data burden on legacy Wi-Fi networks is a growing concern. Hoarding of equipment can occur with popular devices in insufcient quantity. Without asset tracking visibility, redundant equipment may need to be rented even though sufcient inventory is operational and available in nearby locations. The same inefciencies put leased equipment at risk of being lost or hoarded.

RF Code and its healthcare partners offer four specic architectures for tracking and managing healthcarerelated assets. Collectively, they contribute to a scalable, cost-effective solution which is easily upgradeable to accommodate facility changes and expansion to new coverage areas. As a solution set, they enable the migration away from manual procedures and towards new levels of automation and asset visibility. In ZONAL tracking environments, assets are managed in a many-to-one relationship where each tag is recognized by a single reader which has a dened coverage area. This method is applied to open areas where location granularity by zone is the key requirement. The MOBILE tracking option is used to extend the resolution in a coverage area. In these scenarios, a handheld device featuring an active RFID reader is used to locate all tagged assets in range or search for a specic item. Mobile tracking units are optimal for conducting real-time eld inventories and identifying devices which occasionally travel outside of dened zones. ROOM-level tracking is a cost-effective way to dene asset tags that enter individual rooms through the use of an infrared spotter device. This method is optimal for patient room-level tracking; giving 100% accurate differentiation from one room to the next (even in rooms which share a wall). The APPLICATION layer of any RF Code-powered solution leverages the real-time data generated by its award-winning active RFID product suite. RF Codes active RFID tags and readers and complimented by the healthcare applications developed by its world-class systems integration partners. The combined result is a tailored asset tracking system that is exible, scalable and seamlessly integrated with legacy healthcare information systems. RF Code and its partners prescribe the right combination of RF technology and application integration to deliver optimal results. Our dedicated asset trcaking solutions are exible, scalable and enterprise class.

Copyright 2007 RF Code, Inc. All rights reserved. Copyright 2007 RF Code, Inc. All rights reserved.

9229 Waterford Centre Blvd Suite 500 Austin, TX 78758 (512) 439.2200 telephone (877) 969.2828 toll free sales@rfcode.com