Saint Michael’s Medical Center Adopts IBM Sensor Technology For Tracking Medical Equipment
Saint Michael’s Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, has turned to IBM for real-time tracking of medical equipment to ensure that life saving medical devices are instantly available and expertly maintained.
As healthcare systems become smarter, complex medical and diagnostic equipment that provides vast amounts of data are moving closer to the patient. However, with new portable tests and imaging devices, equipment is often moved from a patient to decontamination and then to another patient, or shared among different departments, yet it is common for hospitals to lose track of these mobile assets. For example, a portable telemetry device used to record electrical activity of the heart can easily get lost in bed sheets and sent to the laundry, costing thousands of dollars to replace.
Saint Michael’s Medical Center is using IBM’s Real-Time Location Services (RTLS) software and ultrasound RTLS infrastructure from Sonitor Technologies to automatically track equipment, alert staff when the required level of equipment is running low, and to ensure compliance with patient safety regulations. The use of smart automatic tracking systems in hospitals helps eliminate inefficiency, improve patient safety and save hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost and under-utilized equipment. It also prevents the need for caregivers to spend valuable patient care time looking for the equipment they need.
The new system will initially track more than 2,000 pieces of equipment such as heart monitors, infusion pumps and ventilators across Saint Michael’s using ultrasound receivers and tagging technology from Sonitor Technologies. Ultrasound tags can be attached to equipment to broadcast a unique identification signal to receivers without the risk of electromagnetic interference with other electronic patient care equipment. The ultrasound identification data is used by IBM’s Real-Time Location Service software to not only track and visualize equipment with location accuracy to zone, room or sub-room levels, but to generate alerts and automate responses. For example, an alert can be generated when a heart monitor leaves an assigned area without authorization, or if a crash cart sits in the hallway too long.
Saint Michael’s is also using the system to improve patient safety. Business rules can be created to automatically trigger events — such as requesting additional infusion pumps when the number of clean pumps in the closet drops to only two. With this solution, IBM is leveraging its asset management expertise to ensure a constant supply of equipment without the need for staff intervention or the need for nurses to pick up the phone and place equipment orders manually.
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