Jan 31, 2014St. Croix Systems Corp. has renamed itself Mainspring Healthcare Solutions, to reflect that the operations-management system it offers has been expanded and now provides support for a broader range of RFID and real-time location system (RTLS) technologies. The rebranded company says it has begun supplying solutions for hospitals to manage their enterprise-wide operations with a single software platform that automates workflows and provides reporting and alerting based on activities that may fall outside expected workflow perimeters. Data related to the movements of goods and individuals, used to identify activities, can be provided by RFID—typically passive.
While operating under the name St. Croix, for more than 20 years, the Boston-based company provided asset-management software for hospitals. But as time passed, requests for solutions went beyond the management of mobile assets, to workflow solutions that manage mobile equipment, surgical supplies, laboratory samples, support-services personnel and environmental conditions.
In addition, Hank Goddard, the company's CEO, says he had witnessed a transition toward the use of passive RFID. Consequently, the firm had begun providing ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) EPC Gen 2 tags and readers to feed data regarding the locations of assets, such as pumps or wheelchairs, to its hospital operations-management software. As result of these trends, Goddard's company developed workflow-management software, known as the Service Performances Management Platform, to enable the retrieval of data from a variety of disparate systems, including RTLS and RFID, and to use that information to identify workflow and track exceptions, as well as issue necessary alerts to the appropriate employees if those exceptions occur.
As its offerings expanded and moved toward support services workflow, using passive RFID and RTLS technologies, Goddard decided to rebrand his company accordingly. As St. Croix, the organization provided software for asset management and worked with vendors of bar-coding and RTLS technology to enable the capture of location data via Wi-Fi or active RFID tags. However, he explains, a growing number of hospitals are now expressing an interest in installing RFID solutions consisting of passive tags attached to assets (or worn by people), in addition to portals for identifying when a tag enters a specific zone.
"There's been a massive pick-up in passive RFID" for hospital operations, Goddard says—due, in part, to what he calls fatigue in real-time location systems. There are many "orphaned" RTLS solutions installed at medical facilities, he says, that are not being used as intended. This, he adds, is because the workflow issues had not been addressed first. "It's a shame that so much investment was made with so little to show for it, in many cases. RTLS is a great tool... but you have to fix and control the workflow first." What's more, the RTLS tags often do not capture the required information, due to battery problems. Therefore, Mainspring Health has installed passive RFID systems comprising Motorola Solutions fixed readers, such as the FX7500 model, and a variety of types of ruggedized passive UHF RFID tags, in at least three hospitals already employing RTLS solutions.
One problem with some active RFID tags and readers, Goddard says, is that the battery life of RTLS tags can drop off too quickly—and often unexpectedly—and assets tagged with dead devices simply cannot be located. In addition, the tags are costly enough that they cannot be placed on lower-value goods. Mainspring's workflow solutions often use the RTLS technology, he says, augmented by passive tags that are used to track smaller items and act as backups to the RTLS solution.
For each new deployment, Mainspring first evaluated the hospital's operations, determined the workflow facility-wide, and set up the service performances management software to manage that workflow and identify if the rules are not being met—for example, if equipment or materials are not being transported to the location where they are needed, if maintenance will soon be required or is past due, or if a patient has been waiting an excessive amount of time for services. The firm then introduced passive UHF RFID tags and readers, by installing fixed interrogators at specific locations to establish zones, and attaching EPC Gen 2 tags to everything from surgical carts to mobile assets and consumables, in order to supplement the existing RTLS technology.
According to Goddard, the setting up of a workflow-management system, and the ability to track adherence to that system via passive RFID tags, provides the necessary visibility to drive workflow policies across a wider set of use cases, at a lower price than an RTLS solution alone. "We're not about dots on a map," he explains, referring to the icon commonly displayed on RTLS-based software that illustrates an asset's or person's real-time location. "We're about workflow. You have to connect those dots to drive workflow and results."
The software also comes with an iOS-based series of applications, known as iLoveIt. The apps—which customers will soon be able to download from iTunes and then activate via a password from Mainspring—include iNeedIt, which enables workers to request support (such as specific medications or tools) using an iPhone, as well as iGotIt, which lets a worker acknowledge a request and report on delivery plans. For example, if a nurse requires specific medication for a patient, she can input that request using her iPhone, and then go back into the app for updates regarding the status of that request, which can be provided to the patient, family members or physicians. If the medicine, or the cart transporting that drug, has a passive RFID tag attached to it, that tag's unique ID number could also be entered into the system, and the app would automatically indicate the zone in which it was located.
Mainspring generally does not advise hospitals to discard their existing RTLS technology, Goddard notes. If a system can provide specific location data in real time as long as the tags' batteries are operational, he says, that data can still be fed to Mainspring's workflow-management software, and passive UHF RFID tags and readers could provide redundancy, as well as location data in the event that an active tag's battery dies.
Goddard cites the exceptionally high cost of health care in the United States compared to in other nations, and says that while there are multiple problems causing that high expense, the lack of visibility and a management system that links all of a hospital's systems has led to waste. "We can't deliver affordable health care until we fix the operational piece," he states.
One of Mainspring's customers, the State University of New York's Upstate Medical Hospital (SUNY Upstate), located in Syracuse, installed an active RFID system in 2009 to track several thousand pieces of high-value, mobile equipment throughout its 12-floor facility (see New York Medical Center Tracks OR Equipment for Trauma Care). After several years, however, the tags began to disappear from the system, as their batteries died, according to David Eck, SUNY Upstate's director of clinical engineering. This problem, he says, led the hospital to seek out a solution from Mainspring. The company has provided a system by which the hospital attaches passive UHF tags to some assets, and then tracks those tags as they move through three reader portals installed at the Central Equipment Services department. This makes it possible for the medical facility to determine when the decontamination process begins and is completed for each item, as well as when that asset leaves the center to be returned to the staff for use at the hospital.
To provide even greater visibility, the hospital is now sampling the iGotIt app, enabling personnel to input the time and date when each item was received. Eck says he intends to continue using the existing active RFID solution as well, but in a limited capacity, with fewer assets being tagged, and with batteries being periodically replaced.
Mainspring offers its software on a hosted server accessible by users. Some customers have installed the software on their own servers, however, and manage the data themselves. In a third option, some facilities choose to store and manage data both on their own server and on Mainspring's, in order to provide redundancy.
