- Kontakt.io is commercially releasing its paper-thin, disposable sticker tag which tracks assets in non-reusable settings.
- Hospitals are using the technology to track patient charts, bio-samples, phones and other high value goods with short lifespans.
A multi-hospital company in the southeast U.S. has reported boosting its asset utilization rate and thereby reduced its rental costs with a real-time locating system (RTLS) solution from Kontakt.io. The solution features a disposable Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) sticker recently released by Kontakt.io, along with the company’s full software suite.
The company released the disposable BLE sticker tag in January, but following early deployments, it is now making it commercially available in volume.
The sticker offers a compromise between technologies that either are high cost but offer RTLS functionality, or passive RFID systems at lower cost but without providing a view into where assets are in real time.
Limits with Existing RTLS and Passive RFID
Healthcare companies traditionally have had to choose whether they could pay for high cost RTLS tags, or didn’t need real time location data, said Rom Eizenberg, Kontakt.io’s chief revenue officer. Passive UHF RFID tags, which are energized by an RFID reader, don’t require a battery. They can only be read, however, when within about 30 feet or less of a reader. RTLS tags have the ability to transmit their ID throughout a facility such as a hospital, but they cost $50 or more and require battery replacements periodically.
There are cases in which RTLS for assets is worth the cost. Kontakt.io’s customer Dutch postal services, PostNL, uses non-disposable, BLE tags for their 100,000 roll cages in which mail and parcels are transported from a distribution center to regional sites or post offices. The tags stay on each roll cage that gets filled and emptied multiple times.
The tags have up to a two-year battery expectancy, meaning the tag can be reused many times before the battery must be replaced.
RTLS Managing Assets With Disposable Tag
There is a category of assets that are not used for the length of time that postal roll cages might be. For hospitals, this can mean assets like rental equipment, mobile phones and laboratory specimens that require locating services for a limited amount of time.
Despite being onsite a limited amount of time Eizenberg pointed out RTLS location is critical for these assets. In the case of lab specimens: spinal fluid, biopsied tumors or other tissues sometimes leave the hospital destined for a lab. Such samples are irreplaceable and key to the health of the patient. However the sample or container typically will not return to the hospital. That means a high cost RTLS tag would be a loss.
In these cases, said Eizenberg, “there is still a lot of value in making sure that we don’t lose a biosample or that we have visibility into a rental.” But the tags will only be used temporarily.
Disposable Non-toxic Battery
Kontakt.io opted to build a tag that could be read with a smart phone, fixed beacon or wireless node that comes with BLE functionality at a low cost.
The disposable sticker tag—ranging between $2 and $6—is paper thin with a built-in Bluetooth radio as well as battery, said Eizenberg. The tag is designed to save battery life by not transmitting until it has been activated via NFC. Kontakt.io typically charges those hospitals using its RTLS solution a price per licensed bed for the tags, beacon infrastructure, middleware, hosting and monitoring of data bundled together into a fixed price.
The chemical battery uses no lithium and is therefore non-toxic and disposable, according to Kontakt.io officials. The batteries offer one Hertz of power and typically last 90 days when transmitting every second. Transmissions at five-second intervals extend the life to a year, and 10-second intervals mean a two-year battery life.
Tracking Phones, Patient Charts in OR
Hospitals use the stickers to track assets such as phones used by nurses during their shift, then returned to the nurses’ station. This is done to prevent loss due to nurses inadvertently taking the phone home, out of the hospital, or misplacing it in a drawer on-site.
Because the life span of such assets is longer than 90 days, Kontakt.io set the tags to beacon less often, (such as every ten seconds rather than every second) thereby extending battery life.
Hospital are also using the BLE stickers to track patient charts that accompany patients as they go into surgery. By applying a tag to the paper chart, the unique ID number on the tag can be linked to the individual’s data to help identify when they enter and leave the OR. That solves a problem related to identifying patients even when their ID bracelet needs to be removed.
By tracking the patient chart, the hospital system can alert friends and family when he or she leaves the OR as well as notify the sanitation team to clean the space for the next surgery.
Open Standards for BLE System
The tags work with any BLE system. “We want every person with a smartphone to be able to walk up to the asset and read it,” Eizenberg said. He added that the company strongly believes in an open Internet of Things. “When you drive open standards, you create value and you also create competition. In that way, we always keep up the spirit of innovation.”
He added that open standard technology can support more adoption, and “scale drives value and benefit not only for the customer but for us.”
The sticker tag was first provided in beta version to hospitals and after seeing it in use in real-world settings, “we feel confident that we are ready to scale it up,” said Eizenberg.
By making RTLS more affordable, he said, “it changes how people think about asset categories that can participate in RTLS.”