(((Five thousand items in a real-time locating system spread over five facilities. Hand me that scalpel, nurse.)))
http://www.rfidupdate.com/articles/index.php?id=1462
Link: Carolinas HealthCare Launches Huge RTLS System.
Carolinas HealthCare Launches Huge RTLS System
Tuesday October 9th, 2007
Carolinas HealthCare System (CHS), the third-largest public healthcare system in the US, has completed the first phase of an asset tracking program that is believed to be one of the largest healthcare real-time location system (RTLS) deployments in the US. Currently about 5,000 assets are being tracked over 1.4 million square feet at five facilities.
CHS plans to extend the WiFi-based RTLS system throughout its network, which includes 15 hospitals and medical centers in the Carolinas. Additional facilities totaling about 3 million square feet are scheduled to go live by the end of the quarter.
"As a healthcare organization, we're required to upgrade or perform preventive maintenance regularly on medical equipment," Clay Fisher, director of information service at Carolinas HealthSystem, told RFID Update. "Imagine trying to find one specific IV pump when you have thousands of them across multiple facilities. We have reduced our 'time-to-find' for individual pieces of equipment from hours to less than ten minutes."
((("Time-to-find." "Can you spare me some time-to-find for a cup of coffee?")))
"Besides the tag volume, the project is notable because it involves multiple facilities, no new wireless LAN infrastructure was required to support RTLS, and application software was installed on a central server rather than at each individual facility. (((Imagine living in an RTLS system and you didn't know it was running.
The phone rings. "Your purse is under the couch." "Oh thanks.")))CHS selected active, WiFi-based RTLS tags from Ekahau for the project. The tags are being applied to a variety of high-value medical assets. Fisher said the tags provide asset location accuracy to within ten feet, which will save the healthcare system a tremendous amount of time in locating assets and recording their status.
"We did not have to add any new access points," said Fisher. "We just had to reconfigure the antennas on a couple. But when you're talking about 300 access points, that isn't bad. As a healthcare entity, we're very heavily invested in wireless. We wanted to leverage those investments as much as possible with the RTLS system."
Carolinas HealthSystem recently announced it won several honors for its IT prowess.
(...)
"If legacy wireless LANs don't provide sufficient coverage or density to support RTLS, additional APs are added to help the system triangulate the tag position or analyze its signal strength to calculate the location. Tuomo Rutanen of Ekahau told RFID Update that it is not unusual for healthcare organizations to implement RTLS systems on their legacy wireless LANs without adding more coverage.
"Over the last two to three years WiFi has spread really wide and deep through the hospital market. Now, nine out of ten that we talk to have WiFi in place," he said. "Hospitals are already doing data on their wireless networks, and maybe they're doing voice. Next they're looking to RTLS. When the network is already in place, RTLS becomes just another application." (...)
