10 Things to Consider Before You Buy

Hospitals are extremely complex and dynamic organizations. The RadarFind management team has extensive healthcare experience and designed its tracking system after a year of research involving visits and discussions with hospitals across the U.S.   RadarFind is the only Real-Time Location System designed specifically for the hospital environment.
 

It is important to determine the types of assets you wish to track and the number of such assets your hospital has. Most hospital asset lists do not represent a true census of equipment actually in the hospital. A 250-bed hospital may have as many as 1,000 pieces of mobile equipment to be tagged and tracked. RTLS must be able to scale and accommodate even a larger number of tags in larger institutions, while retaining location accuracy. The system must also be able to track patients to provide the hospital with a fully integrated system. RadarFind’s RTLS was designed to do just that.
 

Hospital staffs have varying comfort levels with computers in the workplace. The RadarFind system is flexible and designed to allow all users to benefit from the RadarFind system in their job. 
 

WiFi systems are now the hospital’s critical data pipeline. Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) require a sensor network and are very difficult to accommodate on WiFi networks. Although it might initially seem reasonable to consider a WiFi-based RTLS product, the needed system changes to accommodate RTLS over WiFi are expensive, generally do not scale to track a large number of assets accurately, and are often very detrimental to the performance of your WiFi network.
 

A RTLS system must include tags, readers, collectors, servers, and very sophisticated software. Some vendors concentrate on software and depend on another vendor to provide hardware. Other vendors that provide hardware do not have collectors that make scalability possible without compromising system performance and accuracy. Still other vendors have no front end software to allow needed reporting capability.
 

The initial purchase and installation of an RTLS system must be completely and accurately presented to hospital buyers. Short term: It is important to determine if all associated costs are included in the proposal. Are sufficient tags and readers being purchased? Is the cost of patient care disruption included? Some systems require significant wiring and network connections necessitating the closure of a block of patient rooms. Long term: WiFi systems often require costly calibration and recalibration. Tags require batteries to operate. The cost of labor to install new batteries can be significant. It is important to ask how long tag batteries last. RadarFind tags last 6 – 8 years, the longest in the industry and often longer than the life of the equipment it is tracking. If batteries have a short life, who is responsible for the cost of replacement? Can the system be easily upgraded to patient tracking? RadarFind’s infrastructure for asset tracking and patient tracking is identical with only the addition of patient tracking software and patient specific tags.
 

Equipment availability means more than just location. Is it in use? Is it in need of cleaning? Can a staff member see the status via use of the software as well as by looking at the tag to determine status? RadarFind has the only three-position status tag in the industry, indicating "available", "in use", or "needs cleaning". Others claim that they can determine status by association with location, but this is highly subjective and shown to be inaccurate.
 

For security reasons and to prevent theft (e.g. wheelchairs), it is essential that the tag has a security alert to notify the system that a tag has been removed or is being tampered with. RadarFind tags are tamper-resistant. However designated hospital staff can easily remove a tag with the proper tool.
 

Unfortunately this does not produce satisfactory results because once a piece of equipment leaves the covered area, it is essentially “lost”. A better solution is complete hospital coverage tracking high priority items with zone resolution initially and then increasing resolution to pinpoint location and permit patient tracking.
 

This should be an upfront discussion with your vendor and result in agreed upon financial flexibility to allow early installation of the system to achieve hard ROI as soon as possible. RadarFind has a number of easy financing and deployment solutions to fit your budget.