ThingMagic RFID Enables Asset Tracking For Greenville Hospital
ThingMagic, Inc., a leading developer of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, recently announced its RFID readers have been deployed at the Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center to support the hospital's loss prevention and inventory management initiatives. Like many large hospitals that perform thousands of inpatient and outpatient procedures each year, Greenville Hospital recognized an opportunity to improve the utilization and management of mobile equipment and surgical materials in its Operating Rooms (OR) and across the entire hospital facility. Selected for superior performance and ease of integration, ThingMagic Mercury5 and Astra Integrated UHF Readers are used to track over 5,000 tagged items in real-time for OR surgical case cart stocking, loss prevention and asset utilization reporting.
RFID Loss Prevention Portals
Because of their compact size, surgical instruments, such as expensive probes, have the potential to be lost within bulky bed linens and scrubs sent to the laundry or trash. To prevent these items from being mistakenly discarded, Greenville Hospital has installed loss prevention portals at OR exits leading to laundry and decontamination rooms and tagged select instruments with a low profile passive RFID tags. Designed by the Industrial Portals Division of Jamison Door, and RFID enabled by ThingMagic Mercury5 UHF RFID readers, the portals offer alarms and visual alerts that notify OR attendants to retrieve these RFID tagged devices before they are thrown out, saving the hospital thousands of dollars in equipment costs per year.
Mobile Equipment Management
Greenville Hospital is also deploying ThingMagic Astra Integrated UHF Readers throughout its main facility to assist in tracking thousands of pieces of mobile equipment (e.g. infusion pumps) and to support OR case cart preparation. The Astra readers and loss prevention portals are integrated with the hospital's deployment of SynTrack for Healthcare from Integrated Business Systems and Services, Inc. (IBSS). The SynTrack system provides Greenville staff with handheld computers and application software that can locate and map any type of RFID tagged asset. Using SynTrack, authorized hospital personnel can also monitor each stage of equipment flow through contaminated cart storage, decontamination and sterilization, perioperative staging and the case staging area. This automatic visibility to the flow of case carts and other types of support processes, frees valuable staff time by reducing time spent searching for equipment and manually documenting processes.
"Passive RFID offers a low cost, low profile complement to active RTLS systems, enabling the tracking of new asset classes and a wide variety of new applications. The Greenville Hospital system is a model for healthcare, designed to deliver improved efficiencies, reduced costs, and, ultimately, enhanced patient care," said Yael Maguire, co-founder and CTO of ThingMagic. "This deployment also reflects the flexibility of ThingMagic's product family, the strength of our partners and our expertise with high value RFID solutions for the healthcare market."
Given the labor savings, reduced costs, physician satisfaction and improved productivity, Greenville Hospital expects a return on investment within one year. "Time saved and increased productivity are significant advantages of this system," said John Mateka, executive director, materials services at Greenville Hospital. "Since we implemented SynTrack for Healthcare, the RFID portals and ThingMagic readers, no tagged devices have been lost in the trash and our overall asset management process has improved. Eventually, we also expect to be able to reduce our equipment purchases through a combination of reduced loss and our utilization history reporting."
With the success of the system evident, IBSS and The Greenville Hospital System are now working together on expanding the solution to other areas of the campus to track additional critical care devices.
ThingMagic will be attending the RFID Journal LIVE! Conference April 27 – 29 in Orlando, Florida. If you are interested in meeting with ThingMagic at RFID Journal LIVE!, please email salesteam@thingmagic.com.
About ThingMagic, Inc.
ThingMagic is a leading developer of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, with broad experience in applying RFID in a wide range of industrial and consumer applications. ThingMagic's customers include some of the world's largest retailers, consumer companies, automotive firms, manufacturers and industrial automation firms. ThingMagic products include fixed and embedded RFID readers and antennas, embedded and OEM RFID technology, and professional services to facilitate the OEM integration of RFID into a wide range of industrial and consumer products. ThingMagic is "The Engine in RFID." For more information, visit: http://www.thingmagic.com.
SOURCE: ThingMagic, Inc.