By Scott Hondros

As the healthcare industry continues to recover from the crisis phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, staffing shortages, workplace violence, and budgets remain top concerns. Due to these circumstances, digital transformation and emerging technologies are now top priorities and the answer for many healthcare leaders as they seek to build more resilient systems to support staffing teams and achieve better patient outcomes.

Digital technologies successfully implemented in a healthcare system can help reduce annual expenditures by more than 10%, as well as lessen stressors on staff and physicians. In addition to the increasing pressure to contain healthcare costs, patient expectations are rising. Healthcare consumers require high-quality care and now anticipate a modern approach to the patient experience to match the personalization and convenience they’ve become accustomed to in other areas of their lives.

By equipping healthcare professionals with digital tools such as Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS), staff can review each aspect of their facility, such as the patient journey, equipment status, staff updates, and the way each has interacted with one another, and ensure daily operations run smoothly. Reliable, real-time enterprise visibility is achieved through IoT-enabled location technology, staff badges, and asset tags. With the successful implementation of smart technology, a healthcare system can reduce annual costs, better support healthcare professionals, and meet the rising expectations of patients.

An inside look at the future of hospitals using location technology
The use of the Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare has evolved at an incredible pace and provides enterprise-wide benefits for the entire industry. While RTLS previously only supplied insights for approximate locations, healthcare facilities can now utilize IoT-enabled badges and tags to gain intel on the precise locations of assets, patients, and staff. The advancements in AI, machine learning (ML), and IoT are enhancing the data insights produced by systems such as RTLS, which in turn help facilities better understand process optimization to improve the patient experience, staff safety, operational efficiency, asset utilization, and patient throughput.

With the use of RTLS badges assigned upon patient check-in, advanced workflow platforms can produce major impact by offering proactive patient status updates, estimated wait times, automatic family text messaging, and staff views on display boards that give an easy-to-read layout of each patient’s journey. This ensures teams are on the same page with up-to-the-minute visibility to continuously measure interactions and address bottlenecks. RTLS can also offer real-time room and bay-level map views, list medical equipment locations and detailed equipment usage, and provide alerts for equipment maintenance and cleaning to further reduce bottlenecks. Once asset management RTLS tags are placed on the necessary equipment, staff can view the precise location of equipment in seconds and quickly locate the tools they need to provide exceptional care.

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