RTLS – Minimize the Risk of Healthcare-associated Infections (HAI)

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RTLS – Minimize the Risk of Healthcare-associated Infections (HAI)

Healthcare facilities constantly strive to enhance patient safety and minimize the risk of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) have emerged as a valuable technology in this quest, offering innovative solutions to monitor and manage various aspects of hospital operations.

The Burden of Healthcare-Associated Infections

HAIs pose a serious threat to patient well-being, adding to the complexity and cost of healthcare delivery. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately one in 31 hospitalized patients in the United States acquires at least one HAI [1]. These infections not only compromise patient recovery but also strain healthcare resources.

Read more about the CDC guidelines

How do RTLS Solutions Operate? And which technology is the most suitable?

Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) employ various technologies to implement location-based solutions. Each technology has its merits and drawbacks primarily based on the accuracy at cost tradeoff (initial investment and operational). Example RTLS technologies include Ultra-wideband (UWB), Ultra-sonic, Infra-Red and RFID.

In our pursuit of an optimal solution, PenguinIN has developed its own RTLS solution using Bluetooth Low Energy 5.1 (BLE 5.1) with healthcare in mind. Today, PenguinIN’s sub-meter positioning accuracy is the underlying enabler for HAI prevention solution offered by PenguinIN.

Learn more: BLE 5.1 vs UWB

RTLS applications for minimizing the risk of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs)

Asset Tracking:

RTLS systems assist in monitoring the movement and usage of medical equipment, ensuring that devices are properly cleaned and disinfected between uses. By maintaining a digital record of equipment locations and usage, healthcare facilities can implement stringent protocols for equipment hygiene, reducing the risk of cross-contamination.

People Tracking

Real-time location tracking of patients allows healthcare providers to monitor their movements throughout the facility. This is particularly crucial in quarantine scenarios where isolating patients with contagious diseases is necessary. RTLS systems enhance the ability to implement effective isolation measures, limiting the spread of infections within the hospital environment.

Staff Monitoring:

Healthcare professionals play a pivotal role in preventing the transmission of infections. RTLS systems enable the tracking of staff movements, ensuring that hygiene protocols are adhered to consistently. This includes monitoring hand hygiene compliance and optimizing workflows to minimize unnecessary exposure to infectious agents.

Workflow Optimization:

RTLS technology helps streamline hospital workflows by providing real-time insights into the movement of patients, staff, and equipment. By optimizing the flow of people and resources, healthcare facilities can reduce congestion, improve response times, and ultimately enhance infection control measures.

PenguinIN

By leveraging the capabilities of real-time location tracking, hospitals can implement proactive measures to reduce the risk of infections, improve patient safety, and enhance overall operational efficiency. This is where PenguinIN comes in. Our adopted technology (PenTrack) is mastered to ensure swift and affordable solutions. We provide the hardware, and grant accesses to our state-of-the-art algorithms that insure efficient and accurate results. Integrating seamlessly into physical and software environments to accommodate our solutions with near zero-overhead.

Get a free consultation today: [email protected]

ROI and Use Cases: Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) in Healthcare

As we address pain points that can be solved with RTLS, we naturally gravitate towards healthcare problems. In today’s world, having a well-structured digital foundation is vital. The use of RTLS is gradually becoming an essential addition to every healthcare facility, prioritizing patient safety and optimizing services while ensuring smooth operations where mistakes are minimized. This article provides insights into the important use cases of RTLS solutions and the quantifiable ROI it brings.

 

Use Cases

Asset Management and Optimization: RTLS enables precise tracking and management of crucial medical assets, such as infusion pumps, wheelchairs, and monitoring devices. By efficiently locating and monitoring these assets in real-time, healthcare facilities experience reduced downtime, minimized equipment loss, and increased asset utilization rates.

Enhanced Patient Safety: With RTLS, patient safety takes center stage. Hospitals can monitor patient movements, prevent elopement incidents, and optimize patient flow. Real-time alerts and notifications ensure timely responses to emergencies, fostering an environment of enhanced patient security and care.

Streamlined Workflows: RTLS optimizes staff movements, streamlining workflows and resource allocation. This leads to reduced wait times for patients, improved staff productivity, and ultimately, better patient experiences.

Contact Tracing: RTLS plays a critical role in maintaining infection control protocols within healthcare facilities. By tracking the movements of medical staff and patients, hospitals can quickly identify and contain potential outbreaks. RTLS data can also be used to analyze patterns of contact and potential transmission, facilitating targeted interventions to prevent the spread of infections.

Hand Hygiene Monitoring: Hand hygiene compliance is vital for patient safety. RTLS enables real-time monitoring of healthcare professionals’ handwashing practices, ensuring adherence to protocols and reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). Immediate feedback promotes a culture of awareness, enhancing patient outcomes. Analyzing compliance trends aids staff training, elevating patient care with PenguinIN’s comprehensive RTLS solutions. Discover how RTLS revolutionizes hand hygiene for North American healthcare facilities.


 

ROI Drivers –

Cost Savings from Asset Utilization: Research conducted in North American hospitals has highlighted the substantial financial impact of asset theft and loss. Multiple studies have demonstrated that the annual cost of hospital equipment losses, attributed to theft or misplacement, can possibly range from $4000 to $12,000 per bed. This translates to annual losses that could range from $400,000 to $1,200,000.

Increased Patient Throughput: By minimizing patient wait times and optimizing bed turnover, RTLS can help hospitals accommodate more patients. A 15% increase in patient throughput, reported in several case studies, could lead to potential annual revenue growth of $2 million per facility.

Avoidance of Legal Liabilities: Implementing RTLS in elderly care units led to an 80% reduction in patient elopement incidents in North American healthcare facilities. This reduction ensures patient safety and mitigates potential legal liabilities, protecting hospitals from substantial financial consequences.


 

PenguinIN: An Affordable RTLS Provider with a Simplified Managed System

PenguinIN takes pride in offering a cost-effective and user-friendly RTLS solution that caters to the specific needs of healthcare providers. Our simplified managed solutions (PENTRACK & PENNAV) ensure seamless integration into existing infrastructures, eliminating the need for complex and costly installations.

Through our advanced tracking technology, healthcare facilities can optimize asset utilization, streamline workflows, and enhance patient safety, all while achieving significant cost savings. With PenguinIN as a reliable RTLS partner, hospitals can focus on delivering top-notch patient care, confident in the knowledge that their operational efficiency and ROI are maximized.

Read more about our process to align with “CBAHI” and how we help our clients achieve regulatory compliance in our in-depth article.


 

Conclusion

The ROI of Real-Time Location Systems in the healthcare industry is undeniable, with North American healthcare facilities experiencing substantial cost savings, improved patient care, and optimized operations.

As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, RTLS emerges as a transformative solution, bringing precision and efficiency to healthcare operations. PenguinIN’s affordable RTLS offering, coupled with a simplified managed system, positions us as a leading provider in the market, empowering healthcare organizations to unlock the true potential of RTLS and thrive in an era of precision healthcare. With a multitude of use cases, RTLS becomes an indispensable tool in elevating healthcare services to new levels of excellence.

With PenguinIN as your trusted partner, we deliver innovative and tailored RTLS solutions for your indoor positioning and tracking needs.

Contact us today to enhance your indoor positioning capabilities.

Learn more about our solutions here



Source* – Real-Time Locating Systems (RTLS) to improve fall detection

CBAHI – Focus Areas and Solutions

Under the tight monitoring of the Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutes (CBAHI), Saudi Arabia is transforming and revolutionizing the healthcare standards across all medical and healthcare institutes to ensure alignment with the 2030 vision of the kingdom.

In the following article, we reflect on certain aspects of the CBAHI accreditation standards, and how PenguinIN can support you with not only complying but leveraging top-notch technology advancements to be ahead in your healthcare services institute’s offerings quality and operational excellence.

 

Executive Roles & Duties:

The following criteria have been identified as KPIs for execs to focus on:

  • Ensuring the provision of medicines, equipment and the entire supply chain for the facility
  • Collaborating with all departments to elevate the quality of the facility’s work & standards for hospitals.
  • Constantly monitoring and evaluating the state of the facility building
  • Reducing the waste of the institute’s medical resources

Today’s technology help execs by automating monitoring and reporting on different aspects of their facilities and workforce. Being informed will help in better decision-making and response times. Whether it is to determine asset utilization, attendance compliance, facility upkeep or practitioner response time, collected allows execs to build ROI-driven decision-making. PenguinIN has the tools to help execs make informed decisions.

 

Infection control and Hand Hygiene:

Once again, ESR CBAHI is bringing the attention of operators on the issue of hand hygiene by requiring

  • A multidisciplinary committee that provides oversight of the infection prevention and control program
  • Putting in place sterilization, disinfection and hand cleaning compliance procedures
  • Proper use of equipment and supplies to prevent infections and provide them adequately

The issue of hand hygiene has undoubtedly become central to any infection control program.
“A key use case that has tangible ROI is hand hygiene compliance. Being able to know who went where and when are keys to ensuring that compliance rules are adhered to”

Dr Mohammed Smadi, CEO of PenguinIN.

 

Through original research and strategic partnerships, PenguinIN has arrived at a cost-effective solution that is applicable to the retrofit scenario where existing dispenser can be upgraded to offer hand hygiene compliance at individual and ward levels.  Additional benefits include automating the workflow around dispenser replenishment and utilization.

 

Patient Experience & Safety:

Patient centricity is a key element in CBAHI accreditation.  Two key pillars are safety and experience. Putting what might be taken for granted in writing, CBAHI has highlighted the following points as drivers for patient safety:

  • The hospital must have a process to prevent wrong patients, wrong sites & and wrong surgery/procedure
  • The hospital has a process to ensure the correct identification of patients
  • Adding a layer of compliance and traceability reduces unintentional errors. PenguinIN allows for tracking patients and staff to schedule and physical areas to ensure that the entire flow and interactivity are captured in real-time and for historical review.

 

To reduce medical errors, ESR CBAHI has required clear access and egress wayfinding for authorized hospital staff and availing wayfinding boards and enquiry points at entrances.

PenguinIN offers digital wayfinding with a customizable directory listing that is easy to upgrade in multiple languages with options to push infotainment messages which may be related to a particular patient (e.g. while waiting) or department.  In addition to offering a noticeable improvement in the patient experience, such solutions result in a meaningful reduction in missed appointments as well and can be tied with a patient reminder solution.

 

Medical Assets Supply & Tracking:

  • Provision of medical supplies by the healthcare facility management
  • Storing and stocking of medical supplies & equipment according to factory conditions & instructions
  • Regular inspection procedures from the healthcare facility management
  • Ensure the protection of medical supplies from theft or damage
  • Disposal of damaged & expired supplies
  • Reduce the waste of healthcare facility resources

 

Effective medical asset tracking and management are crucial for ensuring patient safety, reducing costs, complying with legal regulations, and improving the quality of patient care in the healthcare setting, hence, PenguinIN has special R&D activities on the family products of “PenTrack”, providing not only pin-point location of assets proximity of things but extends to featuring advanced AI Indoor analytics of data, defined business rules and trigger actions based on automatic detection of these specific conditions.

 

Dental Clinics standards updates:

 

  • The facility must activate the staff health and safety program
  • Immediate and consistent sanitation for doctors, nurses & medical equipment

Solutions developed by PenguinIN, including Duress Call solutions that ensure medical staff safety and security, and medical equipment asset tracking and monitoring are among our top-rated solutions, with solutions implementation ease, utilizing existing Wi-Fi network, and or using simple on-premises BLE/Bluetooth based solution.

 

Enhancing Operational Readiness

  • Neonatal tracking system (to protect against abduction)
  • Tracking the sterilization of medical equipment
  • Nurse tracking to support nurse calling systems and nurse safety
  • Equipment dwell times in dirty and clean rooms
  • System to support facility managers in tracking and scheduling maintenance for medical equipment

These are interesting technology evolution times, and PenguinIN is proud to be working with healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia to address these challenges.

To learn more about how PenguinIN can help your facility, reach out today at [email protected]

 

About PenguinIN 

PenguinIN is a leading indoor positioning and IoT use cases provider, headquartered in Irvine, California, with a regional office in Dubai. The company creates digital parallels for physical spaces to optimize day-to-day processes and create unique experiences for visitors and operators. PenguinIN leverages all available radio and sensor information to provide state-of-the-art indoor positioning information to build ROI-driven use cases, with solutions that have already been proven successful in some of the world’s most challenging environments.

About CBAHI
The Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutions (CBAHI) is the official agency authorized to grant accreditation certificates to all governmental and private healthcare facilities operating today in Saudi Arabia. Essential Safety Requirements (ESR CBAHI) has emerged from the Saudi Health Council as a non-profit organization. The principal function of CBAHI accreditation is to set the healthcare quality and patient safety standards against which all healthcare facilities are evaluated for evidence of compliance.

 

(*) References:

  • Close QM.18, ESR Book, National Essential Safety Requirements by CBAHI.
  • Close QM.17, ESR Book, National Essential Safety Requirements by CBAHI.
  • Close IPC.4, ESR Book, National Essential Safety Requirements by CBAHI.
  • Twitter Official Account Announcements by CBAHI:
    https://twitter.com/Cbahi_SA

 

 

CBAHI – A Saudi Approach to Improved Healthcare

CBAHI – A Saudi Approach to Improved Healthcare

 

Saudi Arabia is transforming its healthcare sector through privatization under tight monitoring by the Saudi Central Board for Accreditation of Healthcare Institutes (CBAHI).

CBAHI aims to improve the patient, staff and visitor safety, service level and experience offered by all accredited institutes in the Kingdom. Additionally, it mandates the availability of tools to report errors during the service offering process.

PenguinIN has been refining its solutions to offer healthcare facilities solutions that help satisfy such accreditation requirements. Our solutions address:

 Preventing and Reporting Medical Errors and Improving Safety:

 Ensuring that surgery is always done at the right place

  • Giving a newborn to the correct parents
  • Newborn safety using electronic tagging immediately from birth
  • Ensuring compliance with infection control

 

Improving Patient Experience:

 Offering external and internal wayfinding signage to assist in wayfinding. This includes a navigate from home to clinic feature

  • Clear access and egress wayfinding for authorized hospital staff
  • Availability of wayfinding boards and enquiry points at entrances

 

Enhancing Operational Readiness:

  • Neonatal tracking system (to protect against abduction)
  • Tracking the sterilization of medical equipment
  • Nurse tracking to support nurse calling systems and nurse safety
  • Equipment dwell times in dirty and clean rooms
  • System to support facility managers in tracking and scheduling maintenance for medical equipment

These are interesting times and PenguinIN is proud to be working with healthcare providers in Saudi Arabia to address these challenges.
To learn more about how PenguinIN can help your facility, please send us an email to [email protected]