STRATEGIC SOURCING & LOGISTICSSTRATEGIC SOURCING & LOGISTICS
Rooting through RTLS options, opportunities
by Rick Dana Barlow
Photo credit: Blue Planet Studio |
stock.adobe.com A
t one point in time not so long ago, tracking and tracing everything was more of a luxury, if not a novelty. Today, it’s nothing short of a necessity, if not standard operating procedure by a majority of healthcare organizations. Nearly fi ve decades ago, bar coding insinuated itself into the pen-paper-clip- board procedural triumvirate, proving to be more effi cient even when sticky notes emerged a few years later.
The turn of the millennium, however,
saw the rise of multi-dimensional bar coding (2-D and 3-D to start) and radio- frequency identifi cation (FID), the latter of which became a prominent modality within the overarching category of eal- Time Location Systems (TLS). Primary TLS signal modality options include FID via Wi-Fi or Ultra Wide Band (UWB), infrared (I), ultraviolet (UV) and ultrasound (US). The emitted signals move through active, passive or hybrid chips or sensors on wireless networks.
All of this presents a plethora of choices
for healthcare organizations supply chain in particular as well as strategies and tactics for how to adopt and imple- ment these technological selections. For example, should a healthcare provider organization go all-in on one particular signal modality for tracking and tracing people, processes, products and equip- ment Or should they apply specifi c sig- nal modalities to certain tasks in a nod to a “best-of-breed” philosophy and which functional signal transmission vehicle makes the most sense?
Scanning the landscape Technically, TLS can be separated into three or more categories, accord- ing to Shawn McBride, Vice President and General Manager, Cardinal Health WaveMark. McBride categorizes TLS as real-
time tracking of people (employees, patients, and visitors), real-time tracking of capital assets (wheelchairs, beds, infu- sion pumps), and real-time tracking of one-time-use supplies (stents, balloons, implants, sutures). “Each of these differ- ent categories can be accomplished with several technologies, and some technolo- gies are more suited than others to each category,” he said. WaveMark specializes in tracking one- time-use supplies, according to McBride. “We are technology-agnostic, so we will use any technology that is appropriate for the workfl ows of our customers,” he said. “We have found that FID is well-suited to tracking supplies, so we have developed expertise in multiple types of FID, but we also capture data with bar codes, and we will continue to look for new and evolving technologies.”
One useful metric for determining the best technology for a use-case is the total number of entities to be tracked over how large a physical space, McBride recommends. “For WaveMark’s medical device tracking, it is typically tens-of-thousands devices held in a relatively small area for example, a storage room in the O Core,” he noted. “For this, FID is perfect because the transponders are low-cost,
52 March 2022 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS •
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they are engineered to work smoothly in dense tag environments, they do not require line-of-sight, they don’t need a battery and they are small, so they don’t take up more valuable hospital space. These benefi ts result in enhanced, more effi cient workfl ows for our end users. Examples include very fast, highly accurate cycle-counting, faster clinical documentation with reduced errors, more efficient exception management of products including areas of product reordering, identification and finding missing products, and expiration and recall management.” McBride acknowledges that facilities
might want technology capable of tracking hundreds of people throughout an entire hospital. “For this use-case, it is okay for the transponders to be a bit bulkier, it is okay for them to be higher cost because you don’t need 1, of them and the system may benefi t from having a battery inside of each transponder so they can com- municate at longer distances,” he said. “Understanding these constraints leads to the possibility of using many different technologies, including Wi-Fi beaconing, low-energy Bluetooth, I, ultrasound, active FID, passive FID (no battery) or any of several others. Each of these has its own advantages driven by matching the capabilities of the technology to the requirements of the use-case.” In addition to tracking people, FID is
key to tracking workfl ow and fortifying the documentation process, according to McBride.
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