Mission control. That’s a term most people associate with the halls of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. But in a fascinating case study at the RFID in Healthcare conference, the president of Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Alliance in Fort Worth talked about its own mission control team.
It sounds a lot like traffic control for hospitals and relies on the widespread deployment of CenTrak Gen2IR RFID tags. Winjie Tang Miao talked about how the 1-year-old hospital is using data from those tags for hospital staff, patients and supplies to develop big data insights.
It also used Gen2IR emitters in patient rooms, operating rooms, hallways, public areas and emergency rooms. The infrared emitters read staff badges and patient wristbands to pick up location data.
“The difference is between making decisions based on perceptions compared with making decisions based on reality,” Miao said. “It’s not about Big Brother. It’s about keeping people safe”
Infection control: If a patient was discovered to have tuberculosis, staff would need to find who had been exposed so they could get screened for TB. A vast hospital-wide email would generate mixed results. After all, how many people would recall that they had been in a particular room at a particular time a few days ago? By analyzing RFID tag data, mission control was able to send targeted emails and address the problem faster.
Automated discharge: When patients are discharged, their wristbands are deposited in a “discharge bin” which transmits the patient’s tag number. The system alerts housekeeping that the patient’s room is available for cleaning. Once that’s done, staff responsible for patient room assignments are contacted by phone. The system has also helped cut the amount of time it takes to clean rooms by closing the communication gap.
Improving workflows: One source of bottlenecks at hospitals is when the delivery of supplies intersects with transporting patients from their room for procedures. It used the RFID data to look at when the peak times were for patient transport activity. It used graveyard shifts to increase supply transport activity to minimize congestion. Mission control also uses the data to identify where patients are to help inform other staff and family members whether a patient is undergoing a test and how long they may be or when the patient is discharged. Additionally it can help keep track of how long it takes staff to perform certain tasks. The goal is to increase staff time with patients.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
[Photo credit: RFID tag from BigStock Photo]
