Hybrid RTLS Solution Tracks Infants in Hospitals

Published: October 28, 2024
  • Litum’s new Little Tag leverages the company’s software as a service to manage ultrawide band (UWB) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-based data about where an infant is and who is with them.
  • A city hospital in Turkey is deploying the system for real time security as well as to track operational metrics about patient care.

The most vulnerable hospital patients are often the newborn infants; and while abductions are rare, demands to eliminate any risk of them are high. Facilities use a variety of means to prevent unauthorized individuals from accessing the babies, as well as to confirm that each infant is properly paired with their parent and are never removed.

Addressing these challenges, technology company Litum is offering a real-time location system (RTLS), for infants that includes its new “Little Tag” designed for a hospital’s smallest patients. The infant security service using the tag aims at reducing the risk of mismatches and abductions with a department-focused approach, in highly-secured areas of a hospital.

The solution-as-a-service (SaaS) features both ultra-wideband (UWB) and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)-enabled anchors, gateways, as well as tags, to identify the location of an infant and that infant’s mother or other individual, within a meter or less.

And beyond providing real-time tracking and alerting for the security of the infant, the system offers analytics for hospitals to better understand procedures and efficiencies around deliveries, infant visiting times, and even how long authorized parties remove an infant from the nursery, said Kristina Johnson, Litum’s strategic partner manager.

Building a Hybrid Solution

Izmir City Hospital in Turkey is the first customer, now in the process of deploying the solution to track infants and assure their proper pairing with mothers and other authorized parties, until they are discharged.

The Little Tag—a 50-cent, coin-sized device—can be worn around a baby’s ankle, while also being built into a bracelet worn by mother or other adult patient, according to Buket Yildiz, Litum’s marketing director.  The tag device transmits its location with sub-meter accuracy via UWB and can be used with geofencing and alerting systems, as well as access control for those coming and going from a secured area. The BLE function provides secondary identification and location data in areas where location granularity requirements are not as strict.

The solution software integrates with multiple access control systems including LenelS2 OnGuard.

And because the technology would typically be used on a departmental basis (such as maternity ward), the infant security system would not require a hospital-wide infrastructure deployment, thereby keeping the installation cost down.

How it Works

At the time of her admission into the hospital, a mother first would be provided a Litum RTLS Little Tag that could be worn on the wrist or in the form of a badge. The unique ID encoded on that tag would link to her information in Litum’s software. When the baby was born, that infant would be provided with their own tag, applied to their ankle.

A nurse could then use their phone with a Litum mobile app to scan the QR code on the mother’s and baby’s tags, linking them together in the system software.

The same app can be leveraged when an individual, such as another parent or healthcare provider, is granted temporary authorization to move the baby within certain areas, said Yildiz. The app could be used to set parameters such as the length of time the individual can remove the baby before an alert is sent.

Customizable Exceptions and Temporary Pairing

The system has other alerting features centered around protecting babies. “We will be able to send out alerts around unauthorized access, so if an unauthorized person enters the secure area then the alarm system will activate,” said Yildiz

Users also “can set the system—within our business rules engine—to say if an infant enters an elevator, unauthorized,” Johnson added, and specific doors could be locked down to prevent the child’s removal.

When the infant is discharged from the hospital, the tag is removed, sanitized, recharged and can be used by another patient. A system update in the software would indicate that the patient has been successfully discharged.

Standard Gateways Monitor Exits

Before deploying the system, Litum typically gathers information such as the size of the hospital, number of infants and patient rooms, number of exit points, and then calculates the network of anchors and gateways that would provide the details needed.

All devices can communicate with the wristband bidirectionally—while the gateways are the only network connected devices. Johnson added that while many RTLS solutions for infant security provide a dedicated unit at exits that can interface with security and access control to sound alerts or close doors, Litum’s solution can accomplish the same with its standard gateways.

That’s a differentiator for Litum, Johnson said. “When we’re designing the network topology between anchors and gateways, we will always put a gateway at one of those exit points.” The gateway then serves not only as a device to forwarded location data to the software but also as part of the security system. Using an I/O port on the gateway, the access control and door locking functionality can be connected to the RTLS data, she explained.

Built to Be Scalable

The system is typically designed to be departmental, but if a hospital indicates a wider levels of security concerns and they wanted to deploy an ultra wide band infrastructure across the whole hospital, according to company officials.

When it comes to power, if the Litum Little Tag sends a transmission every second it has a battery capacity of about 14 to 16 days. The tags come with a charging station that’s configurable together depending on the size of an organization. They can recharge the tags in about two to three hours.

While security is the primary goal, the system is designed to leverage the data for other purposes as well.

Gathering Clinical Metrics

Tag data can also be managed on the system to gather clinical metrics for the hospital, Johnson said, such as how long a mother spends in each phase of her delivery process, including moves from labor and delivery to recovery to postpartum.

“We can start to gather additional metrics such as how long did it take, post-delivery, for the mother to make contact with that baby again,” Johnson explained.

That is a feature other infant protection RTLS systems typically don’t provide, she added, but may be of value to healthcare companies. “We know that hospitals are looking to increase their patient throughput for labor and delivery,” said Johnson.

The RTLS data can measure how long a patient stays in an area such as labor and delivery, the number of mother baby interactions as well as staff and baby interactions to build what Johnson calls a portfolio of data.

“We can provide it to them in a way that they can consume it, to change their business practices to be more efficient and provide better patient care, all while keeping the infants safe. That’s what I see our biggest differentiator is,” she stated.

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About the Author: Claire Swedberg