RFID “Asset Management” in Healthcare (Episode 018) at RFID Radio by Academia RFID

How Tallahassee Memorial l Healthcare (TMH) succeeded in its Real Time Location System (RTLS) implementation project
What are the benefits and limitations of the technology
Some Lessons learned
And key inputs of how to improve location accuracy at the very end of this podcast.

Picture : Ygal Bendavid (Academia RFID) & Jay Adams, IT Enterprise Architect, from Tallahassee Memorial l Healthcare

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Tallahassee Memorial 1 Healthcare implemented a RTLS to have accurate & real time visibility on people (i.e. patients & staff) and assets. Following the implementation, the hospital

Reduced capital purchase savings and lower rental costs
Reduced annual operating cost, for example, in term of process improvement such as equipment inventory
Improved staff, patient and asset workflow
Increased equipment availability
Decreased staff frustration
And more importantly, increased in nurse time with patients – therefore Improving patient care

Seems like another hospital that’s experimenting with RFID RTLS? Not quite. What makes this project so interesting is the lessons learned through the project. Find out more by listening to the podcast!

Links to topics discussed in the podcast :

Preconference Seminar RFID in Health Care – Seventh Annual Conf. & Exhibition,
April 27-29, Orlando

Tallahassee Memorial 1 HealthCare

Additional information

Tallahassee Memorial l Healthcare (TMH) Real Time Location System (RTLS) implementation project : the presentation

Interview transcript :

Ygal Bendavid (5:16) :
Here we are RFIDRadio.com. We’re here at RFID Journal Live – the Seventh Annual Conf. & Exhibition at Orlando.

I’m sitting here Jay Adams, IT Enterprise Architect, from Tallahassee Memorial l Healthcare, and he is going to talk to us a little bit about their RTLS implementation project. Hi Jay, can you present yourself and your role in the hospital?

Jay Adams (5:23) :
Yes, my name is Jay Adams I’m an IT Enterprise Architect, at Tallahassee Memorial l Healthcare (…), my primary role in the organization is to facilitate network infrastructure design and also RFID technologies where I’m one of the lead designer at the hospital I the decisions, in the decisions and also bringing vendors in the environment.

Ygal Bendavid (5:42) :
Thank you Jay, now can you talk to us about the goal of the project, and tell us how all the story stared.

Jay Adams (5:50) :
The RFID adventure started in 2006, one of our main goals was to provide asset tracking on our mobile equipment, for nursing staff specifically, one of the complaints we were always receiving was nurses were always trying to find equipment (…) increasing our capital expenditure. The second driver came from Biomed preventive maintenance, Biomed was spending a lot of time driving through the environment looking for equipment (…) following the regulation in healthcare, for any given month we are talking from 5 to 10 hours, strictly walking floors looking for hardware.

Ygal Bendavid (6:58) :
So, what you guys did, you went and look in the market…

Jay Adams (7:01) :
No, what we relied on was…We are already total cisco environment (…) and ask to our partner, from a information tracking perspective what vendors would work with their infrastructure. The initially pointed us to a company called Pango (…) we did a very small pilot in a very controlled area, what we found out, we had success in that controlled area, but after we moved out the main hospital environment and did a master deployment, we then discover that we had major infrastructure problems (…) related to a data grade network design, not a location grade wireless network (…) we had asset moving between floors, so if we ware able to get into a two floor radius looking for a particular asset, that was good, but for our requirement it wasn’t good enough, we needed 15 foot or better. The second problem was related to battery life cycle (…) we had to re evaluate our option with many more vendors out there in the market, looked for Ekahau, Aeroscout, (…) talking with Cisco we decided to go with Aeroscout, number one, because they have a very good interface (…) we talked with several of their initial customers and asked (…).

Ygal Bendavid (11:00) :
Any other technical difficulties with this project (…) yesterday at the preconference seminar, you motioned requirements about changing the infrastructure about the antennas, can you talk a little bit on the subject?

Jay Adams (11:11) :
Yes(…) we had data grade design, we had omni directional antennas in the facilities, we did not had a very high IP density, a very high IP count, (…) all the access points were in the middle of the hallway, noting parameter, what that means from a resolution standpoint, is as soon as you walk out of the hallway, your Location accuracy basically went to zero (…) what we had to do is basically invest and re invent our infrastructure, redesign it completely. We brought in Radiant Networks, their specialisation was not only in RF (…) they understood the physics behind RFID, not only scattering, Refraction, Reflection (…) in collaboration with them went through a site survey (…) went to patch antennas, as a critical peace, and a lot of people don’t think antennas selection and placement can be all that critical (…) if patch antennas gives you a very narrow field or coverage (…) that help you contain RF to a particular floor, and what we found with that design, is our resolution as far as location accuracy went from plus or minus two floors in a given area radius to (…) better tan 15 feet and in some areas of the hospital we actually better than 4 feet, and that is based on the location design (…) when selecting tag vendors, you also need to ask them about their compatibility with you IT infrastructure, is my infrastructure network set up for location?

Ygal Bendavid (13:27) :
Thanks Jay its all useful information, based on lessons learned at Tallahassee Memorial l Healthcare, what are other lessons learned you’d like to share…

Jay Adams (13:37) :
Lessons learned, I would say vendor knowledge (…) you need a vendor that actually worked in the health care environment before, a lot of our facilities building are older (…) number two, knowledge of the product and knowledge about the infrastructure (…) what we found out is that vendors are really knowledgeable about their products, but were not very knowledgeable about the infrastructure that support their products. Application interface (…). The third point would be your infrastructure vendor support; you need to make
sure that whatever system infrastructure you are using, that they will integrate with your location vendor (…) what we found out is that if vendors are not on the same page, you start to have a lot of finger pointing, and what you don’t want to get into is finger pointing a lot of time (…) that’s not my hardware, its their hardware, its not my infrastructure, its their tags, etc.

Ygal Bendavid (14:58) :
Ok, so what’s next?

Jay Adams (15:00) :
What next for us, we are now covering about 100 000 square feet of real time asset tracking (…) expand to a campus wide system, where we can actually monitor vehicles, we have ambulances making various trips between our campuses, also tagging security guards in the facility (…) and choke points (…) also from a theft prevention perspective we are looking to expand our technology to make that works.

Ygal Bendavid (15:49) :
Can’t you do that (choke points management) with Aeroscout exciters?

Jay Adams (15:52) :
With the deployment we just have the tags (…) we are going procuring some Aeroscout exciters in the future those choke points, we are anticipating in our healthcare facility, based on the numbers of entrance of exists, we’ll probably have (…) exciters strategically placed in various areas around elevators, doorways, stairs, (…) anywhere that equipment is going where it shouldn’t be going.

Ygal Bendavid (16:19) :
Thank you for all these useful information, and I hope that future adopters will leverage on you experience and thanks again.

Jay Adams (16:27) :
Thank you

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