GE Healthcare unveiled its Bluetooth-enabled, wireless asset tracking technology Encompass on Saturday at the AAMI annual meeting in Austin.

"You get the right asset in the right place and you know that it's been through a cleaning process or its preventive maintenance process," Jason Schneck, general manager of service sales for western U.S. at GE, told HCB News. "It creates a safer, higher quality of care environment."

Clinical assets in hospitals often get lost or stolen. GE found that about $4,000 is lost per hospital bed each year, which is a significant amount, since a medium-sized hospital is anywhere from 250 to 500 beds.
Encompass was designed to help biomedical engineers and nurses find those critical mobile assets in real time. This was a joint development between GE and its technology partner and enterprise mobile computing solutions company, Zebra Technologies.

Real-time location systems are the standard for managing mobile clinical assets, but large capital expenditures and long installation periods are required to install the technology. However, the capital and installation cost for Encompass is up to 60 percent lower than that for traditional RTLS devices.

In addition, Encompass doesn’t require the hospital to maintain separate, on-site application and database servers or to update dedicated software. The applications that run on the Encompass platforms can be offered as a subscription service.

Encompass is built on open standards and commercial Bluetooth Low-Energy wireless technology that uses the hospital’s existing Wi-Fi network. That eliminates the eight- to 12-week installation period required for conventional RTLS systems.

"Those other technologies require a lot of infrastructure and cabling, but this goes in very quickly," said Schneck. "We have installed this in a 150-bed hospital in under three days.”

It also runs on cloud technology, so any authorized staff member can access it from any computer or mobile device connected to the internet. GE estimated that biomeds and nurses spend about 25 percent to 40 percent less time finding devices with Encompass.

Now they know if they need something, they can pull up the app on their phone and know exactly where it is," said Schneck.

Since Encompass is an open platform, third-party companies can develop their own apps to incorporate into it. For example, apps can be designed to track patients or manage beds.

GE has installed Encompass in three hospitals and collected beta testing data to assess its impact on biomeds and nurses and validate its accuracy. The company has about 14 more installations planned for next quarter.

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