According to a 2012 McKinsey report: “25% of clinical staff’s time is spent looking for things and 10-15% of their time in the OR (Operating Room) is spent looking for instruments.”. Read the report here: McKinsey Healthcare Report: Strength in Unity

With the number of patients in hospitals increasing on an annual basis, resources and assets in hospitals are becoming more difficult to manage, the task of locating a bed, wheelchair or asset for a patient can be time-consuming.

Every hospital has a finite amount of clinical equipment. In such a high-stress, high-turnover environment, it is not easy to guarantee that the equipment you need for a patient is always readily available – particularly as until the patient has been assessed the equipment required may not be known.

However, it is not practical or feasible for a hospital to maintain a large number of spare assets due to the cost, this means that finding available assets quickly in a large facility when you need them becomes a requirement. Especially as by their nature, a lot of these items are mobile: wheelchairs, beds, pumps, etc. are moved from one location to another based on patient needs making it extremely difficult to know where anything is at any given time.

RFIDMedical is a complete solution for hospitals and healthcare facilities that tracks and monitors the movement of clinical assets that are RFID-tagged within a fixed-reader environment or with the use of RFID handheld scanners.  Information for all tracked items is stored centrally on an RFIDMedical server ensuring that all data, for all RFID-tagged items, can be shared securely both internally and externally with the relevant personnel.

This delivers the following benefits:

	The system can assist when you have Specialised Equipment and finding the right wheelchair is more important than finding the first available wheelchair.
	Inspection, calibration and service dates for individual pieces of equipment can be maintained. Comprehensive reports listing equipment due for service coupled with the ability to quickly locate the specific piece of equipment in order to carry out the service makes asset maintenance a much easier process.

The solution

Now, it is possible to track the clinical assets location and presence in any given area in the hospital. By doing this it is possible to know where the clinical asset is and how long it has been there. The benefits are as follows:

 

The benefits are as follows:

	Better patient experience.
	Automatic data collection.
	Knowledge of the location of the clinical asset.
	Improved efficiency.
	Better asset management.