Smart asset tracking is an increasingly popular buzzword in the healthcare industry. From the outside, it looks like a complex innovation that may require a lot of time and money to implement and adopt. However, it makes sense to study the subject in more depth before drawing conclusions.

In our article, we explained the inner workings of using RFID and IoT for hospital asset tracking, and what benefits it can bring in addition to optimizing tracking.

A quick intro to the technologies

The two core technologies that support the tracking of intelligent assets in hospitals are: RFID and the Internet of Things. RFID is directly used for tracking, while the Internet of Things enables efficient data storage, processing, and analysis.

Radio Frequency Identification

Radio frequency identification uses radio frequency electromagnetic fields to identify the location of hospital items with special tags with the help of readers located in hospital corridors, rooms, and nearby facilities.

An RFID tag is a chip with information (unique identifier, electronic product code, etc.) and an antenna used to send the information to the reader. There are active and passive tags. Active tags have an embedded power supply. Passive tags obtain energy from the electromagnetic radiation of the reader. A reader is a device that receives radio waves from an RFID tag located within its reading range. The reader transmits commands and emits energy to activate the tag, and the tag sends its information in response.

Internet of Things

In terms of smart asset tracking, the Internet of Things is responsible for storing, processing, and analyzing data collected by RFID readers: information about hospital items, their use, and how they move.

How RFID and the Internet of Things realize smart asset tracking in hospitals

Let us first briefly describe how RFID and the Internet of Things can help perform asset tracking in healthcare facilities.

Hospital items—hospital inventory and durable assets—are all tagged. The list of these items may include disposable items (gloves, plastic bottles, gauze), linen, bottles and boxes containing medicines, medical tools and equipment (surgical tools, pumps, monitors), etc. Tags can be attached to assets or embedded in them (for example, in surgical tools). In addition, labels can also be affixed to boxes containing medicines and disposable items. Readers located in wards and corridors (eg, walls, doors) send information about the location of assets. Staff can use mobile or web applications with hospital maps to track movable assets. When something is needed, the doctor or nurse will ask for it. The IoT system finds the nearest available item (or item) and informs the user of its location.

Benefits to the healthcare process

The ability to automatically track hospital items and further collect and analyze this data helps hospital personnel and management in many ways.

Automation routine

Automation helps overcome the shortcomings and limitations of manual asset tracking: slow speed, human error, and more paperwork. The following are examples of how to use automated asset tracking and management:

Improve drug supply: When a certain drug in the hospital is about to run out, the IoT system can automatically order a new batch.

Automated reports on hospital equipment utilization: weekly, monthly and on-demand reports on how different departments use hospital items to identify underutilized or underutilized assets.

Improve visibility into the location and availability of medical assets

According to the investigation by Nursing Times, nurses spend at least an hour during the hospital shift to find necessary items. There is no doubt that poor hospital inventory management and durable asset allocation refers to every healthcare professional working in the hospital and can significantly affect internal processes.

With the help of RFID and the Internet of Things, the location and movement of assets can be tracked and visualized in real time, thereby reducing device search time. This is essential for assets from different teams and departments (for example, thermometers, blood pressure monitors, and stethoscopes).

Regularly and accurately update the records of hospital inventory and durable assets will help improve the speed and quality of hospital inventory management.

Find bottlenecks in the hospital's internal processes

Intelligent asset tracking helps reveal the stages of the process where the load exceeds its processing capacity, thereby significantly slowing down the entire workflow. A simple example: If piles of surgical tools are waiting in front of the autoclave, the IoT system will generate corresponding warnings. If this happens systematically, it may indicate that the method of sterilization establishment is very ineffective and the hospital needs to take measures (for example, installing additional autoclaves can help increase the sterilization speed of surgical tools).

Commercial interests

Smart hospital asset tracking solutions with RFID and the Internet of Things can help enhance the business of healthcare providers.

Prevent loss and theft of movable property

Through smart tracking, healthcare organizations can reduce careless use of their property and better prevent it from being stolen. When an item with an RFID tag leaves the designated area without authorization (the detailed information of the procedure developed by the medical institution and the responsible employee), the IoT system will generate an alarm notification to inform the hospital security that it may be stolen.

Optimize inventory and equipment investment

Automated reporting of hospital asset utilization can help hospital inventory experts reduce the number of identical assets that are not being used at the same time without negative impact, thereby reducing unnecessary equipment leasing, purchase, and maintenance expenses. To avoid unnecessary expenses, the hospital saves money and can invest in new advanced tools, such as robotic surgery.

Improve employee productivity and job satisfaction

When there is no need to manually manage tracking-related issues, prepare a large number of reports on used items and equipment, and spend valuable time finding the required assets that have been disinfected and ready for use, hospital staff have the opportunity to focus directly on healthcare service. Therefore, doctors and nurses will not be distracted from work processes and job functions.

Forecast demand

Continuously collecting and effectively mining data about how hospital assets are used (for example, applying advanced analytics and machine learning) can predict which items should be included in the next asset purchase. In addition, health organizations can use this data to better plan the number of assets purchased for new medical institutions, just in case.

Challenges and concerns of adopting smart asset tracking

Although RFID and the Internet of Things are promising for improving healthcare asset management, there are some important points to consider if healthcare organizations plan to establish smooth and effective smart asset tracking.

RFID may affect medical procedures

RFID may affect the performance of medical equipment (such as defibrillators, pacemakers, dialysis machines). Passive tags only reflect the energy of the reader, and the possibility of affecting the medical process is very small. For active tags that emit radio waves themselves, the situation is more complicated. In order to effectively track RFID hospital assets, RFID readers and medical equipment must be placed where they will not affect each other (for example, avoid installing RFID readers near radiological equipment).

Another issue worth considering is that placing the label in the wrong location may affect the capabilities of the tool. For example, in this regard, it is better to use built-in labels for surgical tools, rather than labels affixed to the surface of the tools.

Daily operations of hospitals may affect RFID tags

Hospital assets are regularly disinfected, and some items (such as surgical tools (scissors, clamps, scalpels, retractors), towels, bed sheets, etc.) should be disinfected daily. The RFID tags affixed to hospital equipment need to be sufficiently resistant to the high temperatures in the autoclave to survive the process.

The overall cost may be unexpectedly high

In order to achieve effective smart asset tracking, hospitals need to invest in tags, software, RFID infrastructure maintenance, and personnel training. Although individual tags may not be very expensive (usually from 5 cents to about $10), considering the number of tags typically required by facilities, the overall price will rise sharply. Hospital management should carefully plan how to use smart asset tracking because internal processes need to be changed and aligned with their IT and business strategies. In some cases, the assistance of a third-party consultant may be required.

Intelligent asset management has potential cybersecurity risks

Tracking sensitive healthcare data is a concern for healthcare providers and patients alike. The transmitted data should be stored in a secure database compliant with HIPAA and prevent abuse. Another difficulty is that information security in the Internet of Things is a relatively new field for security experts, and this field still needs research. At first glance, the data on how hospital items are used and moved seems nothing special. However, if there is no data such as the doctors or nurses who use the project, and in some cases-the data of the patients who will undergo surgery, these data will be incomplete.

To sum it up

RFID and the Internet of Things help to get rid of the error-prone manual hospital asset management, making the process more stable and effective. Automated asset tracking is not only related to medical equipment, but also to the various inventory used by each hospital: gloves, towels, blankets, etc.

The list of operational and commercial benefits is quite impressive:

• Track medical equipment scattered in different departments and even hospitals.

• Reduce hospital inventory and improve asset availability.

• Identify the weak links in the hospital process.

• Reduce and prevent asset loss and theft.

• Improve investment in new assets.

It is also worth mentioning that smart asset tracking requires corresponding infrastructure-RFID tracking equipment and a secure Internet of Things system. The system provides data collection, storage, processing and analysis (including advanced analysis), and enables hospital staff and administrators to use special mobile and network applications for asset management.