Wifi Revolution

To track more than 600 patients, Oakwood Hospital & Medical Center said today that it’s implemented AeroScout’s visibility solution in its hospital. The hospital says it aims to have improved clinical staff workflow with this deployment.

 

By saving the time spent locating the patients for care activities such as medication administration and physician rounds, the AeroScout solution will improve the daily lives of nurses and physicians in the hospital, according to the company. The hospital says the nursing and the physician staff were thrilled about the program and the hospital is looking forward to implementing the patient-tracking solution throughout its premises. The hospital also plans to use the same infrastructure with additional tags to track assets like infusion pumps, wheelchairs and workstations on wheels some time in the future, company officials say.

 

With AeroScout’s WiFi (News - Alert)-based solution, nurses and physicians can know the accurate location of any patient in real time, according to the company. The solution is endorsed by the American Hospital Association and it saves time spent locating patients who have to leave their rooms for procedures like CT scans, company officials say.

 

The T2 WiFi-based Active RFID tags from AeroScout will be attached to patients’ chart-holders, which accompany them as they move throughout the ten floors and two patient care towers of the 632-bed facility at OHMC, company officials say. The tags use OHMC’s pre-existing standard Cisco (News - Alert) WiFi network, which is also used for laptops and wireless phones at the hospital. AeroScout’s MobileView software interprets the location data transmitted by the tags and integrates with the existing patient flow visibility system. This displays the patient’s current location on a map on monitors at nurses’ stations, or any web-enabled device.

 

“The inability to locate patients, adversely impacts quality of care, extends wait times, and results in unnecessary labor costs,” said Gabi Daniely, vice president of marketing and product strategy at AeroScout. “By using the pervasive WiFi infrastructure for tracking patients throughout the hospital, our solution improves departmental productivity, clinical decision support and patient throughput. In addition, this enables hospitals like Oakwood to expand the solution to other areas, such as monitoring the temperature of sensitive materials or tracking the location of infusion pumps.”

 

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