Lehigh Valley Hospital to Use RFID to Manage OR Patients

Leader says the badges will have at least three buttons, but that PCTS will work with LVHHN to develop the system so "you can capture more than three events through those buttons." He says PCTS has informed him there are several ways the buttons could be used to indicate and capture events, such as pressing a single button a given number of times, or pressing several buttons in a specific sequence. LVHHN will purchase about 100 badges, which are reusable.

In addition, the UWB RFID system will document when a patient is wheeled into the OR, and LVHHN also plans to use the buttons to mark events during surgery. "Once in the OR, we want to know when the procedure started, when the patient went to sleep and when the incision occurred," Leader says. "We track that now, but we have to manually key in all that information. So this will semi-automate that."

The hospital network plans to begin implementing the PCTS tracking software, Parco software, middleware, badges and fixed-position interrogators within the next several weeks. The interrogators will read the tags and calculate the radius between the tag and reader. To compute the tag's location, Parco's software will utilize the radius information from at least three readers. The location will then be sent via middleware to a database accessible by Amelior ORTracker.

LVHHN will first implement the system in its Cedar Crest facility, where approximately 50 surgeries are performed daily, and hopes to have it up and running by the end of the summer. It then plans to implement the system in the OR departments of its two other facilities (all three are within a 20-mile radius) within the next year and a half.

According to Leader, the tracking system will provide the hospital network with a wealth of data on its surgical processes. "We'll be able to study those processes in a way we haven't before," he says, "to see if there are ways to improve upon them. We will have all this data and analyze our processes at a level of detail that we've not been able to. We are looking forward to that, and hope to see some process efficiencies gained with this system."

Additionally, LVHHN hopes to extend the tracking capabilities to equipment, such as infusion pumps and wheelchairs, as well as to emergency rooms and other departments in the hospital network. "Our OR project," Leader explains, "is a pilot for the whole organization."