CL IN ICAL ENGIN E E R ING
crucially, we can now see at a glance what is in stock, in real time, saving clinical staff or ourselves a wasted trip to the MEL, so that they can commit more of their time to helping patients.”
The ability to check real-time stock via an online portal will also be made available directly to clinical staff enabling them to see equipment availability from the MEL or even neighbouring wards without the need to contact the engineering team. For the MEL staff, RFID tracking has also provided great opportunities to improve workflow and provide better device availability. New loan processes are being put in place which work hand-in-hand with the medical device asset register and RFID tracking. This helps staff track devices more efficiently, which are due for return. By locating them through the system, they can be more readily available for use, whereas before the implementation of the system, staff would have had to sweep all twelve floors.
Coping with constant change During this difficult time of coping with the virus outbreak, medical device management at UHP has been further complicated by the fact that several ward and department movements have taken place, not just internally, but also to external sites, in the effort to keep wards safe and increase ICU capacity from 28 to potentially 110 if required.
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As the hardware infrastructure for tracking is not fully in place, the Trust is not yet always able to actively locate a device’s whereabouts in real-time once it has left the workshop. In the meantime, two mobile trolleys fitted with powerful RFID readers are being used to perform regular equipment searches across other locations within the Trust. Providing a read range of up to 11 metres,
the RFID trolleys capture the locations of tagged devices as they are being pushed through the different wards and departments. The hospital is also fitting RFID tags to walls to identify specific locations or zones, so that the trolley readers can automatically capture where detected assets are located. In addition, several handheld readers are available to locate specific items or carry out localised audits. These enable clinical engineering staff to search for a specific asset, for example a device that is due for servicing. The software on the reader will highlight when the particular item comes into range to enable the user to home in on its exact location. Steve Puleston, business development manager at UHP, explains: “Mobile scans have had to make up the gap in knowledge until our full infrastructure is in place. During this time of constant change, it was critical to make sure that staff had an additional level of awareness to confirm the location they are auditing, so that the information synced with the database is accurate. But it has been very worthwhile as it is now much easier to locate devices for tasks such as re- calling and re-deployment.” Once regular sweeps of all departments
start in the next couple of weeks, the data will be enriched by many more ‘last seen’ locations, making the available information more accurate to help engineering and clinical staff locate items quickly.
OCTOBER 2020
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