From the January/February 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine



Cook from Stanley Healthcare cites joint replacement surgery at Florida Hospital Celebration Health as another success story: “We know that the surgeon wants to see the patient up and walking within an hour or two. We can tell exactly when they arrived and how long after arrival they got up and started walking. In this way, we will be able to look at patient outcomes by combining medical data, procedure type and RTLS equipment data.”



Integrated communication, medical error reduction and automation of tasks
Petruccy of Johns Hopkins Radiology envisions the following scenario: “We would like an application that could automatically say here’s the closest resource, technology and patient, and automatically put all the pieces of workflow together without having to manually do it. Tracking patients as they navigate through the hospital is a real benefit.”


Petruccy says that applications are moving to eventually automate a number of staff activities that relate to patient outcomes, like how long a chair is used for administration of chemotherapy, thereby quantifying the dose and being able to document accuracy and appropriateness of treatment in the EMR.

Lee of Awarepoint says, “doctors all carry smart-phones and you can leverage that. Doctors don’t have to wear staff tags, the infrastructure can just locate their smart-phones. This can power operational savings by deleting the need for physician tagging.”

Versus Technology’s McGreaham anticipates that “we can impact clinical process by giving time back to the caregivers. The pace of the day is chaos. It’s happening so fast. If we can use the technology to improve process and alleviate some of the stress and pacing, you could potentially see a reduction in medical errors.”

January/February 2016 Magazine

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