Location-aware solution to track clinical equipment, use Wi-Fi network and active RFID technologies
San Diego — February 13, 2006 — Denver Health, home to the Rocky Mountain region's academic Level I trauma center and the 398-licensed bed safety net hospital for the City and County of Denver, has contracted with PanGo Networks to provide real-time visibility into the location of critical clinical equipment in the new Women's and Children's Pavilion, scheduled to open in August.
Denver Health said it will use the PanGo Locator application to track more than 1,000 biomedical devices.
"In a large, fast-paced environment like ours, biomedical equipment is constantly being moved throughout the hospital to care for patients," said Jeff Pelot, chief technology officer, Denver Health. "The ability to quickly locate, manage and maintain equipment is paramount to excellent patient care."
PanGo's location management solution includes an end-user application for asset monitoring and reporting, Wi-Fi active RFID tags and a location management platform that integrates location data into third-party or custom healthcare and business applications. PanGo said the Locator uses Wi-Fi access point infrastructure as its reader network, eliminating the need for a separate and costly overlay of hardware, wiring and associated labor.
PanGo said its solutions also integrate with a hospital's existing infrastructure, including widely deployed Cisco Wi-Fi networks, the Cisco 2700 Location Appliance and clinical maintenance management systems (CMMS) such as the TMS family of products from Four Rivers Software Systems, a maintenance management software system provider for the healthcare industry and a PanGo partner. As a result, customers can use their existing IT infrastructure investments to create a location-aware wireless network for biomedical staff.
"Tracking down available equipment can result in lost time and long patient and staff wait times — inefficiencies that are simply intolerable in today's healthcare environments," said Mike McGuinness, president and CEO of PanGo. "By working with partners like Four Rivers Software Systems and Cisco, we're pleased to help hospital networks like Denver Health make the most of their IT and clinical equipment investments to improve the speed and quality of patient care, streamline employee and workflow efficiency, and help contain the cost of 'lost' equipment."
Additional Articles of Interest
- For a contrary view of the future of the RFID market, see the article "The O'RFID Factor: A 'No Spin' Look at Where Radio Frequency Identification Is Headed," in the October/November 2004 issue of Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
For more information on trends relating to radio frequency identification, follow this link for an extensive listing of SDCExec.com articles, featuring the latest research findings on the RFID, including adoption, return on investment and barriers to implementation.
