RFID "virtual walls" could keep tabs on hospital assets

RFID has long since been a pretty common find in your modern day hospital, but now GE and CenTrak are teaming up to make the technology even more useful in those long, winding hallways. Simply hailed as RFID "virtual walls," the creation enables venues to "track tagged mobile medical equipment down to a portion of a single room." By providing sub-room-level distinction, personnel can locate hardware within a monitored area as tiny as 6- x 8-feet, and although it'll likely be used to locate cardiac defibrillators and portable ultrasound machines, patients could theoretically be tracked, too. The new tech will be shown off at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Conference in San Jose next week, though there's no word on how soon the duo will roll this stuff out en masse.

[Via medGadget]

[Darkest Daze @ May 25th 2008 4:31PM]

No matter how you spell it, you still Fa1L3d.

[max @ May 25th 2008 5:06PM]

"patients could theoretically be tracked"

As could staff. The hospital I work in has had RFID ID badges for several years now.

[stitifier @ May 25th 2008 6:23PM]

Why they would want to track me as a member of the housestaff, I have no idea... though I would totally mess with the system if they did, like grab the RFID tag of the hottest girl in the hospital and hide it in a broom closet with mine so somebody out there would think I was getting more action than I actually am...

[Joe Commisso @ May 25th 2008 5:39PM]

They should build RFID chips into the dna of small treefrogs.

[Precision @ May 25th 2008 6:05PM]

well, as a medical student. i'd rather have them tag personal equipment.

if you put down your expensive stethoscope/diagnostic kit(Ophthalmoscope, otoscope)/tendon hammer* even for a minute, then its fair game my friend. you'll be looking for it 'til kingdom come and you still won't find it.

its not done in malice mind you. its just that another doctor looks at it, thinks its ward property and takes it to use on some patient and just places it else where afterwards.

its a sad sad thing, especially when you're a poor student/recent grad.
=)

*well, the tendon hammer isn't really expensive but the rest can be pretty expensive. =)

[stitifier @ May 25th 2008 6:25PM]

That, my friend, is why you uglify the living crap out of your equipment. Make your stethoscope so unmistakably, irretrievably ugly with whiteout and scratches and those ugly slip-covers the nurses like to use and nobody will dare take it.

"That stethoscope is hideous. Where'd you find it?"
"Dunno. Think it belongs to that medical student, though."
"Yeah, I know."

[BigD145 @ May 25th 2008 6:24PM]

Instead of complicating things further in the event of a power outage, how about rethinking how hospital staff are trained? Reliance on tech and convenience in regards to life threatening situations tends to go horribly sour when the littlest thing goes wrong.

[ethana2 @ May 26th 2008 12:37AM]

Ever been to an Amish hospital?

The solutions..
...they're called generators.

[BigD145 @ May 26th 2008 3:13AM]

Have you ever been in a hospital that charged less than $1000 a day to stay in? This will drive the price up a bit more.

Generators? Oh, those things that burn gasoline to make electricity. Yeah, those things that are completely infallible and will be good to go when oil goes the way of the dodo in the next 25-30 years... No matter what new tech in generators comes out in the next 30 years, hospitals will be the last to adopt it. It's an expense that no board member will vote for.

[brandon williams @ May 25th 2008 9:26PM]

The hospital I work at has something like this already. I can pull up an intranet page and find out which room a piece of equipment is in. It's not a 3d map, but a 2d floor by floor overview.

[tone @ May 26th 2008 10:46PM]

as someone who repairs/inspects medical equipment this would not only make my job a hell of a lot easier but it would allow me to spend my time more efficiently. i spend a decent amount of time walking in circles looking for equipment thats due for inspection if i knew exactly where they were i'd be able to get a lot more done in a day. as far as training staff, good luck. we tell people every month (as well as the newly hired at orientation) to check the inspection due date on the equipment and if it is due for inspection to contact us... i've been in the department almost 7 years now and i dont think we've gotten 1 phone call...

[rayw @ May 25th 2008 9:15PM]

One of my doctor friends has a stethoscope with a hello-kitty design all over the pink "sleeve". No other doctor would be caught dead with it, and it was a total hit with the children ...

[rayw @ May 25th 2008 9:16PM]

ouch, i fail at replying to stitifier above.

[Phoenix @ May 25th 2008 9:33PM]

I think that's great. Now we need it for the other equipment too, like Housekeeper carts and cleaning equipment. You wouldn't believe how many hours per day are wasted by housekeepers and other personnel trying to track down their gear just to start their day because some jack-off decided to hide the cart for some stupid reason.

[Prince @ May 27th 2008 9:30PM]

The past two hospitals I've worked at have been using RFID to track equipment and staff for 10 years. Nothing new except GE is jumping on it.

[dwr50 @ May 26th 2008 1:58PM]

Pretty soon we'll all have embedded tags... in US. The whole "Mark of the Beast thing".

[mda20 @ May 30th 2008 8:14AM]

Nothing more than companies making money off of lazy people. I work directly in this field. We have located every device we own every time we need it. Without spending millions for something that isn't needed. It just a matter of people being responsible.