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Excerpt from Healthcare Informatics Online Tracking with RFID Brigham and Women's is keeping tabs on expensive equipment and valuable devices with the help of an indoor positioning system by Michelle Grey Time and resources are often a hospital's most valuable commodities — both of which can be lost by searching for medical assets, such as wheelchairs, infusion pumps and defibrillators. In 2006, 747-bed Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) Boston implemented Radianse's indoor positioning system (IPS). According to Radianse (Andover, Mass.), its solution uses active RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags, LAN-ready receivers and Web-based location analysis software to provide BWH's 17-floor facility with the real-time equipment location. “It was a big undertaking for Brigham, we're now tracking around 6,000 pieces of equipment throughout our many departments,” says Michael Fraai, director of biomedical engineering at BWH. However, the decision to implement an IPS throughout the entire hospital was contingent upon the results of an early pilot study.
Fraai says the technology has allowed nurses to concentrate on patient care rather than “hunting and gathering” for equipment. The technology has also expedited surgery turnaround time, as physicians no longer need to wait for medical devices, he says. In addition, Fraai contends there are a number of regulatory benefits associated with the technology. For example, when the FDA issues a recall, staff can pinpoint the exact location of missing assets. Another benefit of the system, Fraai says, is that the technology is straightforward to use. “You have a tag attached to the device you want to track. The tag communicates through a receiver that's installed in various locations throughout the hospital,” he says. “The information that's transmitted to the receiver travels over the hospital's wires to a Web-based computer application. The application then graphically displays the location of the device.” Fraai says there were considerations he and his team took into account before selecting an RFID vendor. It was important that the system worked harmoniously with the hospital's existing wireless infrastructure, he says. “We have a large number of clinical applications running on our wireless network, including life and mission critical telemetry devices, and we needed to make sure that the IPS would not interfere.” BWH decided to implement active RFID tags rather than passive devices, even though active systems are more expensive. Passive RFID tags operate using power from the RFID receivers but, Fraai says, generally have poor range. Active RFID tags are powered, usually by a battery, and offer better coverage. “Passive RFID tags are used very little in hospitals at the moment because proximity is an issue,” says Chris Lavanchy, engineering director of ECRI Institute, a Plymouth Meeting, Pa.-based nonprofit group that conducts technology evaluations. Fraai says his team decided against installing a client-based system and opted to use a Web-based application to visualize the location of hospital assets. “We didn't want to have to download a bunch of software onto each desktop. With a Web-based application, you can use Internet Explorer to access the application.” Fraai says the major benefit of this is that staff doesn't have to spend time upgrading computers. In conjunction with addressing the functional requirements of a system, it's important to take into account the financial stability of an RFID provider, Lavanchy says. “There are a lot of vendors out there, and it's kind of the Wild West right now,” he says. Some are start-ups and may not be around tomorrow. “If a company you choose goes belly-up, you'll have no support.” Once the vendor was selected, Fraai says there were a number of challenges. Initially, the size of the tags was a problem. However, “We worked with the vendor and the size of the tag has now come down 25 percent,” he says. Continue to full online article...
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“We have a lot of competition for capital dollars, and to make an investment that significant, I needed a level of certainty that we would see an ROI,” says Sue Schade, CIO at BWH. The hospital initially only implemented RFID in selected nursing units, Schade says. Early results showed a 50 percent reduction in lost equipment, and of the $80,000 that was invested, $66,000 was recuperated in nine months.
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