STRATEGIC SOURCING & LOGISTICS currently less accurate than technologies
such as infrared, the great benefit of BLE is its lower effort and cost to implement. BLE is a widely accepted standard. Advantages of BLE also include the economy of scale, integration possibilities and the ability to locate with it at a lower price point.” Snowday encourages giving IR a look. “Infrared can quickly and definitively
locate a person to the room or sub-room level and is highly suited to any use case where location certainty is necessary,” he said. “Nurse call automation (clearing patient calls when the nurse walks into the room) and patient flow applications (where patient-provider interactions drive automation and process improve- ment reporting) particularly require the highly accurate location data that IR provides.”
Snowday offers mixed reviews of RFID and IR in terms of tracking processes – including workflow.
“Various RFID technologies offer a wide variety of location accuracy, from the zone-level accuracy of Wi-Fi TLS to the more precise accuracy of BLE,” he noted “Many RFID technologies are not granular enough to manage real-time workflow or document reliable location metrics for performance improvement. However, advances are being made with BLE and other F-based solutions that may prove useful.
“IR is much more accurate for tracking processes than most RFID technologies since it is very resistant to generating false positives,” Snowday continued. “When tracking processes and automated workflow, it’s helpful to have room-level or better certainty when one or more tags are in a room or the same location.” For tracking products, Snowday favors
RFID. “Small and inexpensive, passive RFID
tags can be attached to products and discarded when no longer needed,” he acknowledged. “Although you can passively scan a device while it moves through a process, your range of appli- cations are limited. Also, the expense of the readers/scanners needs to be taken into account, especially for use cases that require a large number of chokepoints.” RFID may be more suited for equipment tracking, too, according to Snowday. “Wi-Fi as an RFID technology has been available for years and has been a popular choice for tracking equipment,” he observed. “However, its zone-level granularity can limit its use. For example, nurses typically won’t use a Wi-Fi-based locating system as the location data isn’t reliable enough to provide value in the fast-paced nursing workflow. We recently
launched a BLE asset tracking solution that has the lower-cost benefits of FID technology with near-room location accu- racy that both biomedical and nursing teams can use.
When assessing and choosing track-and-
trace technologies, the best signal modality depends on the use case, according to Bob Metzler, Senior Product Manager, Acute Market, STANLEY Healthcare. “For a use case that requires lower levels of location accu- racy, but higher accuracy levels around doors (e.g., patient protection), orga- nizations would be best suited to deploy a Wi-Fi- enabled tag with low- frequency chokepoints to notify staff when a patient
Bob Metzler
has entered an area or doorway that the software has determined they should not enter,” Metzler advised. “For a staff- focused use case (e.g., staff duress), orga- nizations only need tags and Wi-Fi because the system can alert a security guard within a few meters where the staff member is located when they activate their duress button. “The tags are also designed to go into a higher accuracy mode when the duress click occurs, which further improves their accuracy,” he continued. “This type of deployment is cost-effective and fast, which lends itself to an efficient rollout to respond to the needs of organizations that require this type of system on an abridged timeline.”
Metzler points out that other technolo- gies have a much higher technical lift so the projects are extended beyond the ideal time frame that an organization would need such a system in place following an incident.
Sounding off Ultrasound can be a viable selection, according to Metzler.
“For a use case, such as nurse call or
patient flow, we would recommend utilizing ultrasound (US),” he recom- mended. “These use cases require room- or bay-level accuracy and fast result of room entrance (sub-7s), which US can provide with the least amount of envi- ronmental interference.”
Metzler cautions that location services
for visitor management remain a work-in- progress and an emerging market. Why? “Primarily because of the challenge pre- sented by a hospital-owned TLS device given to the public,” he said. “Whatever device is chosen is very likely to be lost when visitors leave the facility. Given this challenge, passive FID and BLE are
54 March 2022 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS •
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the technologies in the market currently which are seeing some success. As these technologies mature in the TLS space, we expect this area to grow significantly.” Wi-Fi-based TLS may be the most applicable for products and equipment, according to Metzler, even as RFID- equipped cabinets remain prominent for product storage and tracking. “Organizations would use Wi-Fi-based
TLS to get an approximation of the loca- tion of the device (within several meters) alongside integration into the device ven- dor’s system to get context into what the device is doing,” he said. “For example, this combines ‘what is the tracked item doing’ with where is the tracked item’ functionalities to determine if it should be moved to another location. This information would then be provided on an on-demand or periodic basis to the appropriate individual who would move the item. In our experience, this is typi- cally sufficient to fine equipment, too.” Still, ultrasound can serve a useful purpose.
“Organizations would employ [US] when the use case required a [higher] degree of accuracy, such as PAR level or nurse call to know with 100% certainty that a tag was in a specific room,” Metzler added.
Seeing red, infrared
Kevin Paroda, Global Product Manager, Acute Care, CenTrak, however, remains solidly behind infrared as an effective TLS modality for many functions. In fact, for tracking
people and processes, Paroda finds IR makes much sense.
Kevin Paroda
“Infrared is the best-in-breed choice when it comes to locating staff, patients and visitors,” he noted. “In healthcare, the ability to quickly and accurately locate a team member or patient is of the utmost importance. IR allows for room location insights without the signal hopping and creating difficulties for the user to deter- mine if an object is on one side of a wall or another. The near-100% accuracy makes it possible to accurately monitor contact tracing, patient/provider interactions and staff safety. Locating a patient, staff member or visitor to the right room in 5 seconds or less is crucial for use-case solutions to be effective.
“Similar to locating people, process monitoring requires discrete knowledge of exactly what occurred, the precise steps taken and in what order,” Paroda contin- ued. “An IR solution offers certainty and
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