Hospital improving patient safety with location information of ambulatory patients and Drager wireless telemetry monitorsAeroScout, a provider of unified asset visibility for the health care industry, working with Drager, announced St. Trudo Hospital in Belgium is extending the use of its AeroScout Health care Visibility solution to include tracking the location of patients and Wi-Fi devices. Central among the tracked Wi-Fi units are Drager's Infinity M300 patient-worn vital signs monitors. St. Trudo is building on the success of its existing AeroScout implementation to further improve patient safety and staff satisfaction.
St. Trudo has been using AeroScout's Wi-Fi RFID solution to improve the management of critical medical equipment and to wirelessly monitor the temperatures in key areas of the hospital. Recently, St. Trudo leveraged its existing AeroScout Health Care Visibility solution and its Cisco Unified Wireless Network to add the ability to immediately locate ambulatory patients and Wi-Fi devices. Patients are tracked either by having AeroScout Tags or by wearing Dr?ger Wi-Fi Telemetry Monitors. Since AeroScout solutions track Wi-Fi devices without needing tags or additional software of any kind, all patients wearing Dr?ger's monitors can be located. This allows patients to walk around the hospital while still being monitored and tracked. Since Wi-Fi is prevalent in the hospital, patients are able to leave their unit and even their floor while still being visible to nurses and staff. This not only increases patient safety, but also patient and nurse satisfaction.
“Every project we execute and every technology we implement is done with the goal of improving patient care and operational efficiency,” said Daniel Loos, Manager, Information Technology, at Regional Hospital St. Trudo. “AeroScout's solution has proven to be a very effective way for us to manage and better utilize our medical equipment. We're now leveraging the investments in our AeroScout solution, Dr?ger patient monitors and Wi-Fi network to further enhance patient safety and comfort.”
Regional Hospital St. Trudo serves the Limburg and Vlaams-Brabant regions of Belgium. The hospital originally installed AeroScout's Health care Visibility solution, including Wi-Fi Tags and MobileView software, in 2008 to track and manage expensive specialty mattresses, IV pumps, supply carts and wheelchairs that are required throughout the facility, as well as to accurately monitor the temperature inside the hospital's data center. A key feature of AeroScout's MobileView software is its ability to provide real-time location information for any Wi-Fi device connected to the network, such as computers-on-wheels or Dr?ger Infinity M300 patient-worn monitors, without the need for additional tags or software installations.
The Dr?ger Infinity M300 is a compact, wearable, wireless patient monitor that uses the Wi-Fi network to transmit patients' vital signs telemetry to computers at nurse stations in the ICU and Cardiology ward of St. Trudo Hospital. Working with Dr?ger and AeroScout, St. Trudo is able to use its existing AeroScout solution to track the location of patients wearing an Infinity M300. This gives patients more mobility and enables the nursing staff to use MobileView to locate ambulatory patients in need of immediate attention.
“As a former hospital nurse, I am well aware of the implications and stress that can result when clinicians can't easily locate equipment and patients,” said Wim Verduyn, Director, EMEA Health Care, at AeroScout. “When an emergency occurs, it's important to be able to locate patients and critical equipment quickly. AeroScout is proud to work with St. Trudo and Dr?ger to help improve care and safety at the hospital.”