by
John W. Mitchell, Senior Correspondent | February 13, 2018
From the January/February 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
HCB News: At HIMSS 2016 you gave a presentation on your successes with RTLS/RFID. Have there been any major milestones or achievements since then?
AS: From a scale perspective, what we’ve been doing is figuring out how to maintain and manage things because we’re so large. We scaled to do temperature checks (clinical refrigerators and coolers) and asset tracking across different campuses. That required a lot of manpower and facilitation of monitoring alerts, replacing batteries and making sure medical devices are getting preventive maintenance.
We had a team that all they did was walk around and check the temperatures in the refrigerators, but now we have a monitor that can alert us when a refrigerator gets unplugged so we don't lose $10,000 worth of drugs. Starting in 2012, when we started tracking staff and patients, we’ve been continually trying to standardize processes.
With the aid of tracking devices, Florida Hospital
is verifying that surgery patients are regaining
mobility at the optimal rate after their procedures
Now, we have a process for teams and departments that want to do staff and patient tracking. They go through an application/approval process – why do you need it, here’s what it’s going to cost, here’s what it will take, here’s the value/cost for doing it.
The last two years we’ve had a major organizational shift. Our IT infrastructure that leads this project got merged with our Central Florida group, so that has slowed our acceleration.
HCB News: What kind of conversations do you expect to hear at HIMSS 2018 regarding RTLS/RFID?
AS: I’ve talked to Stanley about this. I think someone is going to blow this up in some way because it’s not sustainable to go forward where it is. It's too costly and it’s never going to be prioritized over other clinical capital needs. I think someone is going to leapfrog it and figure out a way to allow for efficient tracking and movement of people and items throughout a facility at a lower price.
HCB News: Looking further ahead, is there a level of RTLS/RFID insight that we're not yet tapping into?
AS: People who have never done temperature tracking are still buying it, so the business is still viable. But in terms of innovation and taking it to a different level, it’s stuck. Until it gets leapfrogged and able to return a value that is easily and quickly achievable – not a five-year ROI – that’s when we’ll see movement forward.
I think the engineers get stuck in their minds over how it can really work. They tell me that the size of the tags and the battery life having to be so long explains why it’s so costly. But how can I have an Apple Watch that can track me in a five-mile run, but you can’t track me in a building? I think there’s a need for rethinking the technology for tracking and wayfinding in health care.
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