by
Jennifer Rioux, Contributing Reporter | February 04, 2016
From the January/February 2016 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Key questions when considering RTLS technology
Liz Wheeler, from the Office of Continuous Improvement at Sanford Health, discusses tomorrow’s needs when planning for today, including scalability and sustainability. She mentions the importance of identifying who will take ownership and be accountable for maintenance governance, implementation and support. Thinking about the various use cases that may need to be addressed and the flexibility of the system is crucial, says Wheeler, as well as planning strategies to increase staff buy-in. She cautions providers to consider their goals and the success metrics and to do research on the technology and products available, while not neglecting aesthetic considerations.
Bernard Lee, director of product marketing for Awarepoint, suggests questions to ask when considering RTLS:
1) Can I support way-finding on my traditional RTLS technology?
2) Can I support all my use-cases on the same platform and install in stages?
3) Will the vendor support the system 24/7/365?
4) Does the vendor support a fully and centrally managed system?
5) Can you do all the configurations and updates over the air and can you monitor the health of the network and battery life remotely?
Stanley Healthcare partners with Tableau for software data analytics visualization tools. Tableau makes data visualization software that offers options for viewing and understanding the implications of data by translating data into images that help providers see patterns and identify trends in minutes.
Joel Cook, senior director of Health Care Solutions at Stanley Healthcare, describes how “the patient flow dashboard shows average wait time for patients in a particular clinic for all doctors across all patients for the last 3 months. The analytics team will look at it to improve it and identify bottlenecks. It becomes almost a prescriptive model. When they can visualize it they can start asking questions, try solutions, and see how they work.” Versus Technology product manager
