Even before the pandemic, Sengkang General Hospital in Singapore made extensive use of real-time location systems for asset tracking and contact tracing. Now, it looks to expand its use to optimize hospital workflows in conjunction with IoT technology to allow staff to spend more time providing care.
It recently signed a memorandum of understanding with local healthcare technology company Cadi Scientific to develop smart facilities in hospitals by integrating systems, processes, technology and people. People. In doing so, they aim to enhance healthcare management and services and improve the patient experience.
SKH first partnered with Cadi Scientific in 2017 to implement RTLS across hospital inpatient and outpatient departments to enhance patient safety and automate the process.
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
According to the press release, SKH and Cadi Scientific will collaborate on three key areas that will be further developed as part of SKH’s smart facilities: operating theatres, emergency departments, and wards.
In OTs, SKH has installed a digital dashboard that receives the patient’s real-time surgical status via an RTLS tag. These tags are also used to track nearly 1,000 devices in OTs, reducing the typical device search to 5 minutes from 2-3 hours.
For ED, SKH plans to enhance RTLS reporting to track a patient’s latest contact with staff. This will prompt staff to check on long-term ED patients who have not interacted with them for a long time and provide support if needed.
Finally, for wards, SKH will develop location tracking technology to deploy the robot to the right patient or staff member at the right spot. It will assist nurses by performing basic tasks such as delivering supplies to a patient’s bed.
TREND TO BIGGER WOMAN
Another Singapore hospital, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, has been using RTLS as part of its COVID-19 response. It also uses RTLS tags to track patients, visitors and staff, as well as equipment, in real time.
In other news, a recent study conducted at Yongin Severance Hospital in South Korea showed that RTLS can better identify close contacts of COVID-19 patients than conventional contact tracing methods.
ON PROFILE
“As we consider the future needs of hospitals, the combination of IoT and RTLS has become the backbone of our hospital operations. With this partnership, we will be looking at ways to enhance the use of RTLS in more areas beyond asset tracking and contact tracing We found that this combination of technologies could be applied to process optimization, helping employees spend more time interacting with patients and their families,” commented Professor Teo Eng Kiong, CEO of Sengkang General Hospital.
