NEWS
Keeping track of life saving medical equipment at Saint Michael's
Saint Michael's Medical Center in Newark, New Jersey, has turned to Sonitor business partners IBM and Agilysys for real-time tracking of medical equipment to ensure that life saving medical devices are instantly available and expertly maintained.
April 9, 2010 Saint Michael's Medical Center is using IBM's Real-Time Location Services (RTLS) software and ultrasound RTLS infrastructure from Sonitor Technologies to automatically track equipment, alert staff when the required level of equipment is running low, and to ensure compliance with patient safety regulations.
The new system will initially track more than 2,000 pieces of equipment across Saint Michael's. Ultrasound tags attached to equipment broadcast a unique identification signal to receivers without the risk of electromagnetic interference with other electronic patient care equipment. The ultrasound identification data is used by IBM's Real-Time Location Service software to not only track and visualize equipment with location accuracy to zone, room or sub-room levels, but to generate alerts and automate responses. For example, an alert can be generated when a heart monitor leaves an assigned area without authorization, or if a crash cart sits in the hallway too long.
Improved efficiency and patient focus
"Saint Michael's is always under cost pressures, looking for ways to improve efficiency and focus more on the patient," said Angelo Schittone, vice president and chief information officer at Saint Michael's Medical Center. "We have highly skilled staff and caregivers. The new system allows our biomedical engineering team to better use their time managing and maintaining equipment and allows nurses to focus on patient care rather than looking for equipment."
Flexibility
The IBM solution provides Saint Michael's the flexibility to expand the system over time to cover additional rooms or even track patients and staff in important areas such as the emergency department, catheterization department and surgical department.
"The need to streamline complex systems, reduce costs and eliminate waste is at the foundation of smarter healthcare," said Rob Merkel, healthcare industry leader, IBM Global Business Services. "Working with IBM, Saint Michael's is creating a new system that will help improve their processes, enhance patient care and boost efficiency."
IBM Business Partner Agilysys, Inc., is providing IBM WebSphere Sensor Events software and IBM System x servers.
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