The carts are provided to nurses for medication and charting purposes. Physicians and phlebotomists have carts as well, which are equipped with mobile printers and bar code scanners, and can be tapped on and off using ID cards.

The hospital also deployed a real-time location system that can track patients. It's useful in cases of infant abduction, patient wandering, Emergency Department tracking, tracking of staff for productivity gains and tracking of equipment to simplify searching for them.


For example, if a nurse is trying to track an on-call physician, they initiate a message to the physician with the patient information. That physician needs to respond back — they can say that they are busy and will be there in two minutes, or to find another on-call physician.

The nurse can also take a photo of the patient or of their lab results and send it to the team of caregivers.

Families of patients are also kept in the loop through text messages that update them while their loved one is in surgery.

Also, it’s easier now to communicate with a patient's home care workers once they are discharged.

“This really is changing the way things will be done in hospitals to drive efficiency and quality,” Bak said.

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