Ask any Head of Nursing where all her OR nurses are right now, and she'll probably just laugh at you. Or ask a Materials Manager how many wheelchairs his hospital has and where they all are at the moment, and he'll no doubt think you're slightly deranged.

But bring in an RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) Mobile Asset Tracking System, and you can get all the answers, accurately, in just minutes. This technology allows hospital administrators to locate a piece of portable equipment simply by clicking on a computer screen.

RFID Asset Tracking of mobile assets is just starting to be utilized by the healthcare community, but it's a technology that's sure to gain greater acceptance in the years to come. That's because it can keep real-time tabs on not just equipment, but people -- right down to the infants in the nursery.
As far as mobile equipment goes, experts say that approximately 30% of hospitals' mobile assets are not available at any given time because they are hoarded by staff members, or stored away without any record of the location -- or simply forgotten. In the past, hospital staff -- especially in larger facilities -- would waste a lot of time searching for equipment and often found themselves buying extra simply because they could not find something. Since the early 2000s, a growing number of hospitals have been using RFID Asset Tracking to better account for their mobile inventory.

According to a report by Gartner Research, Inc. entitled, "RFID Enables Sensory Network Strategies to Transform Industries," worldwide RFID spending currently amounts to $504 million and will surpass $3 billion by 2010. This technology, currently employed by 5 to 10 percent of hospitals throughout the United States, is comprised of RFID tags that emit radio signals that are captured and displayed on a computer screen. The display typically shows the hospital's floor plan, and a coordinate grid shows the location of the assets on a particular floor.

The tags indicate whether or not the equipment is in use and the software can provide the location history of the equipment. Hospital administrators can determine whether the equipment has been used frequently or infrequently. Equipment that has been idle or used marginally can then be sold, often on the Internet, in order to recover the value of the asset. A recent BearingPoint survey of 313 health care organizations found that more than 70% said that RFID would improve health care processes.

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