Espirito Santo Saúde, a health-care company that runs 17 facilities across Portugal, has improved its emergency response speed and begun tracking assets with a real-time locating system (RTLS) intended to allow staff members and patients at two of its sites to obtain help in a hurry if an emergency occurs. The system, installed by Unisys, includes a combination of Ekahau badges and wall-mounted call buttons that can signal alerts over the existing Wi-Fi system at the health-care company’s facilities.
Simplicity was a priority for the company, which wanted a solution that could be quickly installed and allow the sending and receiving of emergency alarms wirelessly. The second challenge for the hospital was location, says David Vieira, Espirito Santo Saúde’s director of IT and communications infrastructures—not only with regard to locating the room from which an alarm was sent, but also locating assets that workers had difficulty finding. The firm’s new RTLS solves both problems, he says.
Of its 17 facilities—15 of which are hospitals, the other two provide assisted-living services—the company identified two of its more recently constructed facilities, each of which already included a Wi-Fi infrastructure. At Casas da Cidade, an assisted-living facility for senior citizens, the aim was to enable the staff, as quickly as possible, to be alerted to an emergency involving its residents, who are free to move about the building. At the other site, acute-care provider Hospital da Luz, call buttons are being used in public spaces and private rooms to summon help during an emergency.
The health-care company began working with Unisys in 2007 to find a suitable location system. “After getting a deeper understanding about the possible applications of the technology, two pilots were delivered in 2008,” says Dinis Fernandes, Unisys Portugal‘s global outsourcing and infrastructure services country director. The objective for both Casas da Cidade and Hospital da Luz, he explains, was to decrease the time between when a resident or patient called for help and when employees arrived to address their concerns. Espirito Santo Saúde hoped for a system with which mobile residents and patients could call for a nurse wherever they might be within the facilities, and with which staff members could view that emergency notification no matter their location.
At Casas da Cidade, residents live in 115 town houses and other private residences. At the time of the RTLS installation, in 2009, it was a new facility lacking a nurse-calling system. By installing this system, Vieira says, Espirito Santo Saúde hopes to differentiate Casas da Cidade as a facility that brings patient safety to a higher level. “It’s crucial to know where [elderly residents] are when they ask for help,” he states. “In these moments, [knowing] the precise location can save precious minutes.”
Management wanted a system that could be deployed in a few hours, rather than in the days or weeks that would be needed to set up a traditional nurse-calling system. Unisys installed several more Wi-Fi access points to ensure full coverage of the entire facility. Ekahau wireless call buttons were then attached to walls in some public waiting areas, as well as in all residences, and a sign was posted beside each button to indicate it should be pressed in the event of an emergency.
Once a button is pressed, the tag inside the device transmits its ID number to the access points, and that data is sent to Ekahau’s Vision Web-based software, residing on Casas da Cidade’s back-end server. The ID number is linked to the location based on the specific Wi-Fi access points receiving that transmission. The Vision software then issues the alert to the Ekahau T301BD badges worn by approximately 10 nurses and physicians. The location of the particular button that elicited the emergency call is displayed on each badge’s LCD screen. Employees can also signal alerts by pulling an emergency switch on their own badges. The wall-mounted call buttons can be removed from the wall and installed elsewhere at any time, and the system can immediately determine a button’s new location, enabling the device to operate at that new site.
The residents also carry Ekahau T301BD badges. If they require assistance, they can press a button on the badge, which transmits its unique ID number to Wi-Fi access points covering the entire campus. That ID number and alert status is also received by Ekahau’s software, which then links the ID to the tag’s location, and again sends the alert to nurses in the form of a text message on a screen on their own Ekahau badges, thereby indicating there is an alert, as well as in which room the button was pressed. The message is sent only once, and the staff need not acknowledge the message or their response.
At Hospital da Luz, which has 168 beds, a similar Ekahau system was installed in early 2010 throughout the 328,000-square-foot building complex. Patients, however, are not issued Ekahau T301BD badges.
The lightweight Ekahau Wi-Fi badges carried by workers were a better alternative to mobile or Wi-Fi phones that are not carried all the time by staff members, Fernandes says, and which can be heavier and more inconvenient to carry.
The wall-mounted call buttons can be moved or added at any time, without reconfiguring the software. If a tag needs to be moved from one public area to another, for example, it is simply placed on a new wall and the Wi-Fi system begins locating it at that new location.
Hospital da Luz intends to now begin tracking assets with the system as well, starting with tags on IV pumps and vital sign monitors, in addition to other highly mobile, high-value equipment. Eventually, Vieira says, the system will be installed in other facilities. “We are in the initial phase of the project, testing and measuring all the capabilities of the technology,” he states. “We are continuing watching for new opportunities that can gain with RTLS.”
“For now,” Vieira adds, “we are paying attention [to] the design of the wireless network in every new or redesigned facility, allowing us to use RTLS everywhere.”
When it comes to the next phase of the installation at Casas da Cidade, he says, “We are going to add some intelligence to the system—like, for instance, the ability to detect that someone is at some unusual area during the night. This could help prevent accidents, caused by [a resident’s] disorientation during the night.”