Patient Tracking

Hospitals are under pressure to do more with fewer resources, facing staffing shortages, equipment availability issues, and inefficiencies in supply management. Traditional manual processes make it difficult to track critical assets, leading to wasted time, increased costs, and potential risks to patient safety.

RFID technology provides a solution by automating asset tracking, improving sterile processing, and enhancing collaboration between hospitals and medical device manufacturers. By enabling real-time visibility of surgical trays, sterile packs, and high-value medical inventory, RFID reduces human error, streamlines workflows, and ensures compliance. Hospitals can start small—digitizing manual processes and tracking high-priority assets—before scaling up for greater efficiency and cost savings.

With RFID, healthcare facilities can enhance patient safety, reduce waste, and improve operational efficiency.

Discover how RFID is reshaping hospital operations and helping healthcare providers do more with less.

Reference.

Hospitals face significant challenges in managing medical supplies, including inventory tracking, replenishment, and ensuring critical supplies are always available. Manual processes often lead to inefficiencies, errors, and time wasted on administrative tasks. RFID technology offers a solution by automating inventory management, streamlining the tracking of supplies, and improving accuracy. With RFID-enabled smart cabinets, hospitals can automatically track the usage of items, monitor inventory levels, and generate orders when supplies run low or near expiration. These systems also enhance patient safety by ensuring that supplies are correctly linked to patients. Additionally, RFID labels on high-value medical devices and consumables enable better traceability and compliance with regulatory standards. By embracing RFID, hospitals can reduce errors, and time wasted on administrative tasks.

Reference.

The West Park Health Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, looks back on a 120-year history. The most recent investment is a new outpatient care center.

RFID Canada has installed a passive UHF RTLS system on seven floors. 608 antennas, 120 readers and 50 multiplexers enable real-time asset management across 730,000 square meters.

Khaled Elshimy, CEO RFID Canada, explains the details of the largest RTLS system in a Canadian hospital.

Collaboration between RFID Canada and EllisDon

System Integrator RFID Canada

Founded by Bob Moroz in 1987, the Canadian company has been operating as a system integrator, software developer and distributor for RFID, NFC and BLE technology for almost 40 years. Kahled Elshimy has been the CEO since 2022.

Construction Company EllisDon

From the very beginning, the collaboration between RFID Canada and EllisDon, headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, has been very cooperative. EllisDon employs 4,000 people worldwide and was founded in 1971. The company projects over five billion US dollars in construction projects annually.

Building Structure

The new construction, which began in 2020 and will be completed in 2023, consists of five wings that are all connected via a central forum. All five wings, or zones, extend over seven floors. Several departments are located within each zone.

To enable the transparent location of all assets, all zones and their sub-departments on each floor were included in the installation. The assets of the entire building can therefore be localized.

Architecture

The brass-coloured Muntz metal on the front of the building symbolizes the valuable services provided in this clinic for people with the most serious illnesses. The aim is to inspire courage to face life.

The colors of the room design are also part of the concept. In the entrance area, patients can expect a light-flooded forum with piano music, a cafeteria and small stores. The well-being of patients is an inseparable part of rehabilitation.

West Park Medical Center

• The WPMC offers rehabilitation and care after strokes, amputations and musculoskeletal disorders. Built in 1904 as a sanatorium in the York district
• New construction since 2020 with an area of 730,000 m²
• 330 beds
• Five interconnected wings
• 7 Floors

Digitized Processes

Asset Tracking and RTLS

Tracking devices in hospitals is part of risk and data management. It can be a matter of survival for a patient if a required device cannot be found immediately. For example, medical equipment such as endoscopes, ultrasound or dialysis machines as well as patient beds must be available in real time.

In addition, the RTLS solution enables seamless monitoring of the equipment inventory. Digital inventory data can be used for process analyses, risk assessments, investment calculations or cost accounting.

This also enables device pooling. The main aim of the system, in addition to the RTLS solution, is to record data very efficiently and synchronize it with the applications of an analysis tool.

Identification and Localization

With the passive UHF RFID solution installed, it is possible to identify the inventory in every area of the building – regardless of how large the area is. This allows the inventory of all assets and consumables to be monitored, controlled, located and maintained. The system also has the ability to identify and count a specific group of assets, such as wheelchairs, in a specific zone.

Precise Real-Time Localization

All assets in a room can be identified and monitored in real time. This is possible because ceiling antennas capture every movement. This makes it possible to determine how long an object has been in a room. As soon as the object leaves the room, it also disappears from the room’s monitoring system.

Maintenance and Servicing

The RFID system provides data on the inventory of a specific type of device. For example, there are 20 wheelchairs in a zone. Three of these wheelchairs need to be serviced. In a matter of seconds, the data of these three wheelchairs is transferred to a handheld with the click of a mouse.

A technician can use the handheld to very quickly filter out these three wheelchairs from the total inventory of 20 wheelchairs.

The RFID Hub

The software can technically recognize the direction of the tags as well as a zone. Several control points in the zone enable direction recognition in real time. Specific search queries can be responded to in real time. The RFID Hub can also be integrated into third-party applications.

All inventoried assets or consumables can thus be interpreted by the third-party user for analysis purposes. The interoperability of the data and the system is an advantage for process monitoring.

RFID To Go

Mobile devices support the mobile and fast identification of specific devices. The main purpose of RFID To Go is to integrate a handheld RFID reader and offer it as a standard solution for any third-party application.

“We worked closely with the hospital team to select the right tags for the equipment and devices. We finally decided on tags from Beontag, HID and Metalcraft.”

Khaled Elshimy – CEO, RFID Canada

The Deployment of Tags

Some devices are even equipped with two tags – active and passive – as an active RFID solution is used for patient and employee tracking, which is also used in some cases for very large medical devices. In the first step, 25,000 devices were fitted with passive tags.

Carrier Pro from Beontag

This tag offers a larger area for visual printing. The antenna design also works reliably in the vicinity of products with a high water content. The reading range is up to 12.5 meters.

IQ 600 from HID

The HID IQ OM 600 is a small, thin, self-adhesive UHF tag designed for use on metallic surfaces. It is manufactured with a special flexible shield so that it can be attached to flat or curved metal objects. The reading range is up to seven meters.

Asset Tag from Metalcraft

This tag is the closest thing to a “one size fits all” RFID solution! The Universal RFID Asset Tag is a surface independent tag that utilizes a patented inlay design and passive RFID technology to achieve read ranges regardless of the surface – metal, plastic and even wood. The inlay design has a very low profile for attachment to metal.

UHF Readers from FEIG

A total of 608 antennas and 120 readers with 50 multiplexers were installed.

Advantages

Even though the system has only been in use for a few weeks, the initial reports have been positive. Staff have rated the visualization of sites and movement analyses on desktops or mobile devices as making their work easier.

Less search time and walking are the result. Overall, the use of devices has been optimized, and with it the service for patients.

Interview with Khaled Elshimy

Where do you see the greatest advantages for the WPHC?

Khaled Elshimy: Hospitals are under great pressure to be efficient. The RTLS solution not only allows acute search queries to be answered quickly, but above all data analyses can also be carried out.

Needs analyses become more precise with analysis tools and AI. At the same time, investments can be optimized. Theft or other losses are also minimized.

Even bottlenecks can be predicted. The data thus helps the hospital to achieve end-to-end digitalization.

How do the staff evaluate the solution?

Overall, the efficiency of the processes benefits patients. The quality of care increases. Automating routine tasks makes everyday hospital life easier for everyone. The work and responsibility of nursing staff is made easier.

Source: Think WIoT