Sensors, tags, USB dongles, and IoT anchor points facilitate tracking of medical equipment!
Fujitsu Components announces the full deployment of Fujitsu’s Asset Tracking solution at the University Medical Centre (UMC) Utrecht, The Netherlands, providing location data for medical equipment throughout the hospital’s extensive site. This follows a 2018 preliminary study on location technology in a pilot ward at the UMC Utrecht. The first phase of the project focused on practical aspects of locating resources from the perspective of care, logistics, and maintenance.
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The key aim of UMC Utrecht’s smart hospital initiative was to track the locations of various medical devices in the hospital. Doing so eliminates the need for healthcare workers to divert from their core tasks by spending valuable time locating the right equipment. Furthermore, hospital maintenance teams need to quickly locate medical equipment and perform maintenance, cleaning, or repair. With over 1,100 beds and more than 11,000 employees working in UMC Utrecht, these assets could be in any of the hospital wards.
With the Fujitsu Asset Tracking solution, staff can now pinpoint the asset location to departments and, where needed, room level. Facility Managers made responsible for stocking and replenishment of medical equipment now know exactly where the medical devices are and if there are any clusters in the storage rooms. With this knowledge, they can set minimum and maximum stock levels and ensure that there is always a device on hand for nursing staff. Effective management of the inventory reduces spending on unnecessary equipment.
UMC Utrecht researched various solutions before choosing the Fujitsu-Wirepas solution. With the partner Wirepas, Fujitsu is able to deploy a reliable, optimized, scalable, intelligent mesh network capability onto the Fujitsu wireless hardware that will be the backbone of the asset tracking solution. Advantages of the Wirepas Massive mesh network for healthcare environments include low interference, self-healing, and easy roll-out, and this solution has proved easy to expand and highly cost-efficient.
Taking the project forward, the Fujitsu hardware selected are anchors, tags, and USB dongles that work together to grow a massive mesh network, which grows seamlessly with each added device and is infinitely scalable. UMC Utrecht reports that the mesh network has successfully been installed, and the systems will serve the hospital’s 35 departments.
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The smart hospital network is scalable with additional IoT mesh devices. For example, environmental monitoring. Fujitsu’s CO2 environmental sensor can monitor CO2 levels, temperature, sound levels, illumination, and moisture through dashboard systems. The alerts can enhance control of ventilation, heating, and other services to improve safety, well-being, and health of staff, patients, and visitors.
The Fujitsu IoT Connectivity Solutions can be evaluated through Mesh Evaluation Kits available at Fujitsu.
