Medical device tracking
Integrate ELA Innovation geolocation beacons into your medical equipment location solutions.
Medical device tracking, what is it?
Managing a pool of medical equipment that is used by various departments and by many people is a challenge that all hospitals face. Indeed, in case of a medical emergency, time can be of the essence, so it is essential that the medical staff can find the necessary equipment as quickly as possible.
In addition, every year, many medical devices are lost in health care centers, generating non-negligible additional costs related to the purchase of the material. In fact, 20% of medical equipment cannot be found and on average 75% of these equipments are unnecessarily ordered.
To meet this challenge and optimize their management, many hospitals are equipped with geolocation solutions for medical equipment. Thanks to the 100% autonomous geolocation beacons, no more time wasting and unnecessary costs.
How does the medical devices tracking work?
To geolocate medical equipment, different technologies can be used. The choice of one technology over another will depend on various criteria, such as the type of infrastructure required, the number and size of the equipment to be geolocated, the environment in which the solution is to be installed, the cost of the infrastructure and, finally, the level of accuracy required.
To geolocate medical equipment, ELA Innovation offers location beacons based on two different technologies: Wirepas Mesh and Quuppa AOA.
This location technology is based on a mesh network of fixed and mobile beacons. The equipment to be geolocated is 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 a business platform. The user will be able to visualize the position of the equipment on a plan or a map and to have access to dashboards of follow-up of the assets.
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 medium-sized vehicles like a stretcher for example.
This indoor localization 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 embedded on the equipment 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 trace the position of the latter in less than 100ms.
The user will be able to visualize the position of the equipment in real time on a plan or a map and access dashboards to monitor the assets.
This technology offers an extremely fine geolocation accuracy, less than a meter, which allows to locate in real time all the equipments, whatever their size.
“The shape factor of the tags was very important for the customer, which is what pushed us to choose the COIN line from ELA Innovation. Compact, this tag integrates particularly well with small medical devices such as syringe pumps that have to withstand harsh conditions.”
Why integrate ELA Innovation location beacons into your medical device tracking solution?
The location beacons from ELA Innovation are ideal for meeting the need for the tracking of medical devices for many reasons:
100% autonomous
Their battery powered operation offers up to 20 years of autonomy depending on the model, guaranteeing a competitive total cost of acquisition.
Quick and easy installation
Extremely easy to install thanks to the various means of fixation (high performance double-sided sticker or support that can be screwed), these sensors can be fixed on any type of surface and do not require any wiring.
Robust and compact
These beacons are perfectly adapted to extreme environments. IP68, they are waterproof and resistant to shocks and vibrations.
Real-time tracking without GPS
These beacons offer an indoor tracking accuracy of less than 1m, as well as a reactivity (configurable from a few seconds to a few minutes) allowing to know in real time the position of each equipment.
Which ELA Innovation tracking beacons to use?
If you are an IoT solution provider and you want to integrate medical device tracking into your offer, here are the ELA Innovation products
that we recommend to you:
