When employees at Maryland’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) require paperwork pertaining to a human body being stored at the Baltimore facility, those files could be located at a variety of places. To better manage such files—of which the office currently has approximately 30,000—the organization employs ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) EPC Gen 2 RFID real-time location system (RTLS) technology, as well as a software platform that manages data from 11 different readers. Based on the system’s success, the office plans to utilize it to track the bodies themselves. Armed with data regarding a corpse’s location, the office will know if a body has been kept unrefrigerated, and for how long—an important piece of information, since many bodies provide organs for transplant procedures, and must thus be kept cooled in order for those organs to retain viability. Although a body remains on site for only about 72 hours, its file circulates from one floor to another, and often to a third or fourth floor. Hear how the RTLS solution enables the firm to quickly locate decedents, and find out why proof of tracking in the OCME system suggests that living patient uses will be significant for emergency medical services (EMS), as well as within a hospital’s intensive-care unit, operating room and other areas.
Speaker: Michael Eagle, Director of Information Technology, Office of Chief Medical Examiner, Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene