This week, Jackson Memorial Hospital admitted eight critical patients simultaneously—all American cruise ship passengers injured in a bus accident in Dominica, and airlifted to the Miami hospital. Doctors wanted to be sure they had all of the proper equipment available to treat the injured, and they did—thanks to a newly installed real-time location system (RTLS) from Awarepoint that the hospital is utilizing to track thousands of items throughout its nearly 4-million-square-foot, multi-building campus.
“The head of respiratory was able to find a ventilator using the RTLS in an area it shouldn’t have been in, and where staff never would have looked,” says Jasen Thacker, Awarepoint’s account manager, who has been stationed on site at Jackson Memorial, helping to install the system. “The RTLS allowed the hospital to have this extra ventilator ready when the patients came in.”
To date, Jackson Memorial Hospital, a 1,500-bed teaching hospital that is part of the Jackson Health System, has affixed approximately 6,500 active RFID tags on everything from infusion pumps to wheelchairs to ultrasound machines. By mid-March, Thacker, two contractors and three hospital staffers are expected to have tagged a total of 12,000 assets, affording everyone from doctors and nurses to pharmacy personnel and therapists the ability to search for and locate equipment throughout the facility.
When tags are affixed to the items, each asset tag’s unique ID number is correlated with a visible asset control number on a bar code already affixed by the hospital. Thacker and the others use a handheld bar-code scanner to read the bar code printed on the asset tag, as well as the bar code printed on the item, thereby enabling the RTLS to link the item to its particular tag. At that time, any other available information can also be entered into the RTLS, such as the department to which the asset belongs.
The tags operate at 2.48 GHz, transmitting their unique ID numbers over the 802.15.4 (ZigBee) communications protocol, to small receivers (which Awarepoint refers to as sensors) that plug directly into standard 120-volt AC wall outlets. A tag or sensor can pass data to a main access point (known as a bridge) by first transmitting it to another tag, which then forwards the information to a third tag or sensor, or to the main access point, depending on whether the second tag is in range of the main access point. In the Awarepoint network, a tag can send data to a bridge through up to five other tags and receivers. The receiver forwards a tag’s ID number and signal strength to a bridge, along with its own ID number and the time it read the tag, as well as the ID of the transceiver that may have previously picked up the tag’s signal.
The bridges link, via an Ethernet cable, to a central Awarepoint server that calculates the locations of all tagged assets, then displays that information on a map of the facility. Any computer linked to the system’s local area network (LAN) can access the map and employ Awarepoint’s software to search for a specified type of asset. According to the company, the software can provide the item’s location to an accuracy level of 1 to 3 meters (3 to 10 feet). The Jackson Memorial deployment, the company reports, provides an average location accuracy of 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) or better throughout the hospital, including in-room locations, as well as hallways and other defined areas.
Awarepoint utilizes a proprietary algorithm to determine asset locations, based on the tags’ RF signal strength. Generally, the firm reports, Awarepoint’s RTLS requires one sensor per every 1,000 square feet, and one bridge per every 20,000 square feet.
Jackson Memorial Hospital’s employees can use the real-time location system at any of the health-care organization’s networked computers. By logging into the hospital’s intranet and clicking on an icon representing the RTLS, Thacker explains, the staff can perform searches for medical equipment in much the same way searches are conducted using Google. Workers can search for “wheelchair” to locate all of the facility’s wheelchairs, for instance, or they can narrow the search to a particular area or floor. Searches can also be performed using an item’s specific asset-control number.
In addition to the asset tags used to locate items, the implementation also includes 250 Awarepoint T2T temperature-monitoring tags, which can wirelessly monitor and maintain logs regarding temperature-sensitive assets. Jackson Memorial utilizes the tags to monitor conditions within refrigerators used to store pharmaceuticals. The RTLS is programmed to send e-mail alerts to personnel if any of the refrigerators’ tags log temperatures outside of a pre-set, acceptable range. The hospital is also employing the T2T temperature tags to monitor its radiology data centers. Temperature tags are placed in front of server panels to monitor the ambient temperature and enable the staff to utilize external air conditioners, when required.
Awarepoint began working on the Jackson Memorial implementation in late October 2008, and the real-time locating system went live in mid-December. The hospital continues to consider opportunities to utilize the RTLS to track assets; since it began using the system, it has discovered that the technology will be useful in helping to protect more than just medical equipment.
“We have regular meetings and regularly talk about the system’s return on investment,” Thacker explains. “One thing that has continually come up is the hospital’s flat-screen TVs in the patient rooms and hallways. They seem to go missing very, very often, to the point that it has become a weekly event. So, one of the directors suggested we look at tagging assets that don’t qualify as capital assets but are commonly stolen items.” As such, he adds, the hospital has requested an additional 400 tags to keep tabs on the televisions.
The Jackson Health System plans to expand the RTLS to other facilities as well. The current implementation covers 91 floors and 17 buildings, and includes Jackson Memorial Hospital’s South, North and West wings, the East Tower, Holtz Children’s Hospital, the Ryder Trauma Center, the Mental Health Hospital and the Highland Professional Building, as well as parking pavilions and other annex buildings. A second phase, which will include another 8,000 tags, is planned to involve Jackson South Community Hospital, a 199-bed acute-care hospital located in south Miami-Dade County, and Jackson North Medical Center, a 382-bed acute-care center located in North Miami Beach. No specific dates have yet been established for the second phase to commence.