Case Study: Wi-Fi-Based Asset Tracking Improves Hospital Cycle Time

By Integrated Solutions magazine

KangNam St. Mary's Hospital is a recognized leader for healthcare services in Seoul, South Korea. The facility is part of the main affiliated hospital for the Catholic University of Korea system, with more than 850 beds. Since establishing the General Medical Examination Center (GMEC) in the early 1980s, the facility has seen a steady increase in the number of examinations each day. With so many patients each day, seemingly minor administrative inefficiencies were multiplied, and the average medical checkup took 3 hours. Patients and their families were left frustrated, without a way of gauging their progress through the checkup process.

KangNam St. Mary's selected one of Korea's top systems integrators, ChoongWae Information Technology (CIT), to help it find a solution to increase the efficiency and accuracy of the medical checkup process, increase patient throughput, and ultimately enhance the image of the facility. The solution had to include automatic recognition of a patient's physical location for correct clinical placement and association of staff to patient, as well as enable monitoring and cataloging all patient visit statistics. This crucial time and location information would allow the hospital to better audit patients' movements through the diagnosis process, which would assist in future service improvements.

Used with permission from Integrated Solutions magazine.