Brigham & Women's Hospital Expands Radianse RFID Deployment
A Radianse indoor positioning system (IPS) was originally deployed as a pilot at Brigham & Women's Hospital (BWH) to cover nine cardiac
care units, six cardiac operating rooms and the connecting common
areas, and the portals of the Radiology, Cath Lab and post-anesthesia
care units. The pilot resulted in a 50% reduction in losses of the pilot's tracked
equipment, the ROI for the pilot came in at just over a year. (press release)
rates. Surgeons were waiting for essential equipment to be found before
procedures could begin. Nurses were typically charged with hunting and
gathering, which took them away from direct patient care. And we wanted
to intervene before patient wait times became too long,” said [Michael] Fraai [BWH director of biomedical engineering].
Sue Schade, chief information officer at BWH, added, “There are lots of
important problems to solve in healthcare and budgets are not
unlimited. The work that Michael and his team did around technology
evaluation and ROI analysis bumped this from a 'nice to have' to a
'must do' project.”
The expanded Radianse system will provide real-time
equipment tracking across all Med/Surg units, intensive care units, ORs
and perioperative spaces, the emergency department and hospital common
areas. BWH has selected room level coverage for the patient areas and
zone level coverage for its common areas. A total of 6,000 medical devices will be tracked by the system.
