RF Technologies, OSI Integrate RFID-Generated Alerts With Telephony

The cordless IP landline phones that OSI provides very much resemble conventional cellular phones, Frost says, though they are a bit larger. Previously, a health-care worker would have had to carry a pager to receive alerts generated by one of the two RFID systems provided by RF Technologies. The company uses small dual-frequency (262 MHz and 381 MHz) active tags embedded into wristbands or pendants for its patient- or resident-monitoring systems.

RF Technologies' Code Alert Wandering Management Solution is designed to help caregivers track the movements of residents at assisted-living facilities, or patients in health-care facilities, from wandering off the premises. Its Code Alert Wireless Call Solution enables a resident or patient to summon help quickly—even when away from a nurse call button integrated into a hospital bed—by pressing a button built into an active RFID tag worn as a pendant.

To manage the data generated by multiple alerting systems, RF Technologies developed software that integrates the alerts into a common database and forwards them, via a facility's IP phone network, to the handsets assigned to the appropriate health-care workers. A single handset can receive alerts generated by RF Technologies' RFID devices, as well as fire and smoke detectors—and, of course, the handset can also be used to receive and place phone calls.

Gus Talhami, an account executive with RF Technologies, says that using the integrated platform should help health-care workers respond more quickly to calls and alerts, since they won't have to search for or use several different mobile devices.