Patient tracking in hospitals
Integrate ELA Innovation beacons to your indoor people tracking solutions.
What is patient tracking?
With the number of hospitalizations constantly increasing, hospital performance is a key concern. In order to meet the challenges of improving the patient journey, more and more hospitals are investing in connected solutions.
Among the IoT solutions, those allowing to track patients are very popular with medical centers. Indeed, allowing patients to easily find their way around the different services is a very good lever for improvement. This will limit delays and no-shows for appointments, saturation of waiting rooms and also crossings and flows of patients.
How does indoor patient tracking work?
The patients tracking solution can be deployed in different technologies: Wirepas Mesh, Quuppa AOA and RFID Active DOT.
This indoor geolocation technology is based on a mesh network of fixed and mobile beacons. The people to be geolocated are equipped with mobile beacons and the fixed beacons are positioned in the buildings at regular intervals creating a mesh.
The positioning information is calculated in relation to the signal strength (RSSI) emitted by the mobile beacons and goes back through the mesh to the gateway. The Wirepas Positioning Engine tool will then transform the raw data into GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude) that can be visualized on an IoT platform available on PC or mobile.
The user will be able to visualize the position of people on a map.
Depending on the density of fixed beacons in the network, the localization accuracy can be set from 5 to 10m, which is enough to localize by areas.
This indoor geolocation technique is based on a network infrastructure consisting of mobile beacons and fixed 360° antennas. The antennas are fixed in height in order to cover a maximum of surface on the ground and the beacons are carried by the people to be located.
The AOA (Angle Of Arrival) protocol, will allow to detect in a 3D reference frame, the angle formed between the antenna and the beacon and to get the position of the latter in less than 100ms.
The user will be able to visualize the position of people on a map.
This technology offers an extremely high geolocation precision, to less than 1m, allowing to locate in real time the patients and to follow their movements.
This geolocation technology is based on an infrastructure composed of beacons, antennas and active RFID readers. The beacons are worn as badges by people and the antennas and readers will be strategically positioned in the buildings.
When a tag enters the reader’s detection field, it will be activated and send its identification number, thus allowing to locate the tag’s owner. This technology will also allow to limit access to certain areas and to trigger sound and visual alerts in case of unauthorized entry.
The particularity of the Active DOT RFID system is its dual-frequency operation:
– A low frequency (125KHz) allowing a precise and configurable detection (from 1 to 25m).
– A high frequency (433MHz) allowing the secure transmission of data.
This technology offers a reading speed of less than 1 second, allowing for a very good reactivity and therefore for real-time information.
Why integrate location-based beacons into your patient journey solution?
ELA Innovation location beacons are ideal for meeting the need for patient tracking for many reasons:
100% autonomous
Their battery operation offers a strong autonomy of up to 5 years in Wirepas Mesh and Quuppa AOA and up to 14 years in RFID Active DOT.
Easy and quick installation
Ultra simple to install thanks to the various means of fixation (high performance double-sided sticker or support that can be screwed), these beacons can be fixed on any type of surface and do not require any wiring.
High precision geolocation in real time
These beacons offer an indoor geolocation accuracy of up to a few centimeters, without GPS, as well as a reactivity allowing to know in real time the position of each person equipped with a beacon.
Ultra compact, discreet and waterproof
These beacons are perfectly adapted to medical environments.
Which ELA Innovation location beacons to use?
If you are an IoT solution provider and want to integrate patient tracking into your offering.
Here are the ELA Innovation products we recommend:
