A Medical Device Daily

As the 2007 edition of the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS; Chicago) meeting continued in New Orleans, InnerWireless (Richardson, Texas), a provider of in-building wireless systems, reported that its real-time location system (RTLS), called Spot, is commercially available following a year of successful beta testing and integration with location-enabled applications.

InnerWireless said that Spot gives "room-level" accuracy for tracking and locating critical medical devices and assets.

Spot's commercial launch is InnerWireless' focus during the HIMSS meeting, the company said, though it is also is showcasing its broadband distributed antenna system, Horizon.

Spot uses architecture comprised of master radios, beacons and asset tags that work together to locate equipment in real time, down to room level. Spot also is wireless, predominately battery operated and requiring virtually no cabling, so its wireless infrastructure "is as easy to install as a home's smoke detector and does not disrupt the sterile hospital environment," the company said.

Finally, Spot is a secure, IT-friendly solution that minimizes IT touch points and has no impact on an organization's 802.11 networks, in contrast, InnerWireless aid, 'to many real-time location systems that can only locate to broad zone levels, require room-level wiring and infection control, or disrupt existing 802.11 networks."

The company noted that Spot is an open solution to ensure that location information can be integrated into applications. InnerWireless said it has completed integration with PanGo Networks (Framingham, Massachusetts) for location management and asset tracking; St. Croix Systems (Burlington, Massachusetts) for enterprise asset management; and SYMX Technologies (Santa Clara, California) for equipment and resource management.

InnerWireless said that Spot beta tests were conducted at hospitals across the country, including Vassar Brothers Medical Center (Poughkeepsie, New York). The 365-bed hospital tracked IV pumps during its Spot beta test and said it saw an immediate return on investment and transformation in workflow.

"Prior to the deployment of Spot, nurses spent on average 30 minutes per shift looking for medical equipment. During the beta test, that number dropped to 15 minutes per shift, so when you're talking about wage and overtime, that turns into a $6.5 million savings for the hospital over the next five years," said Nicholas Christiano, VP/CIO of Health Quest (Poughkeepsie, New York), Vassar Brothers' parent company.

Another company showcasing a tracking system is NEC Unified Solutions (NEC; Irving, Texas), a developer of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and data communications. It is exhibiting its Univerge Assured Mobility portfolio with the addition of a location tracking component for healthcare.

The Wi-Fi-based radio frequency identification (RFID) solution operates within NEC's Wireless Optimized Architecture (WOA) to track the location of medical devices, patients and hospital staff, "increasing workflow efficiency and reducing costs for healthcare organizations," it said.

NEC's Location Tracking is designed to enable hospital staff to track and quickly locate tagged equipment and patients. In addition, patients can alert doctors and nursing staff in critical situations through a remote call button at any point after admittance. The system also provides hospital staff with a record of where a patient was taken and the types of equipment used in their vicinity, allowing for improved billing efficiencies through location-based association.

Location-based events (i.e., a patient entering an unauthorized zone or equipment requiring immediate delivery) automatically trigger alerts and notifications.

Paul Lopez, general manager, marketing and services at NEC Unified Solutions, said, "NEC's Location Tracking provides . . . the ability to keep track of patients and medical equipment using secure voice and data communications over a wireless infrastructure to dramatically enhance employee productivity, improve the level of patient care and streamline procedures to increase profitability."

In other new from HIMSS:

• Acuo Technologies (St. Paul, Minnesota), a company developing high-performance software for intelligent medical image management, storage and data migration, reported the availability of a new software component, the PACS Aggregation Engine.

Acuo's PACS Aggregation Engine, a component of the Acuo DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) Services Grid, can be licensed and used with any third party DICOM- compliant application, such as DICOM workstations and traditional department PACS, to enable a number of advanced features that can help healthcare organizations leverage their IT resources and improve patient care.

Applications include location of DICOM objects across multiple DICOM devices in a single query; pre-fetching content from multiple DICOM devices with a single request; and data migration from multiple DICOM archives.

• InfoLogix (Hatboro, Pennsylvania), a provider of mobile workforce technology solutions, reported the launch of its new Healthcare Applications Suite, which uses advanced wireless technology to "increase the efficiency, accuracy and transparency of complex business and clinical processes in healthcare."

The solutions to be presented at the conference include HealthTrax, an RFID-enabled patient and asset tracking system; BedCentral ED, a patient tracking application for the emergency department of hospitals; and BedCentral, a patient flow and capacity management application.