Excerpt from Network World
October 2006
Full article is available in .pdf format

An inside look at wireless location services

No longer just for external uses, technology even helps track wheelchairs and patients.

By John Cox

A wireless location service at a Harrisburg, Pa., hospital has finally solved a problem that you never see addressed on “Gray’s Anatomy” or “ER”: Where to find a wheelchair in a sprawling 546-bed hospital.

The basic wireless technology that’s been used for real-time location services (RTLS) in outdoor dockyards, container freight yards, and railways is moving indoors. Yankee Group last year estimated the 2005 global market for all types of real-time location systems to be about $20 million, but skyrocketing to $1.6 billion in 2010.

Vendors crowding wireless location service market

A group of wireless vendors, using a mix of proprietary and standards-based radio gear, and a growing array of software application companies, now offer enterprise users the chance to layer on a network of wireless tags and access points to identify, track and locate both things and people. Harrisburg Hospital is doing both.

The hospital, part of Pinnacle Health System, first deployed in early 2005 a wireless tracking system for surgical patients. The application is PathFinder from PeriOptimum of Pittsburgh. The software works with the 433-MHz radio tags and access points from Lawrence, Mass.-based Radianse.

PathFinder gives Web-based minute-by-minute data on each patient’s location and status in the entire surgical process, drawing positioning coordinates from the Radianse hardware and location algorithm, and mapping these to a floor plan of the operating room complex. The data becomes a critical element in managing staff workflow and moving patients more efficiently through each stage, according to Dr. Craig Wisman, the hospital’s vice president of medical affairs.

In May, the hospital decided to expand the Radianse infrastructure and adopt that vendor’s asset tracking application for locating equipment.

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