RFID Powers Real-time Asset Management for St. Croix Systems

Helps customers track equipment, make preventive maintenance more efficient

Helps customers track equipment, make preventive maintenance more efficient

Boston — June 2, 2004 — St. Croix Systems, the Cambridge, Mass.-based developer of WOSYST clinical engineering software for asset management, and Lawrence, Mass.-based Radianse Inc., a provider of indoor positioning solutions (IPS), today announced a non-exclusive development partnership to integrate Radianse active radio frequency identification (RFID) technology into WOSYST for real-time tracking and management of medical devices.

The companies said the first demonstration of the integrated solution is to be at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) 2004 Conference & Exhibition in Boston, June 5-8.

Radianse said an IPS provides the indoor corollary to the global positioning system (GPS) and can extend the potential of active-RFID for practical application in healthcare. Beyond identifying where people and equipment are located, a Radianse IPS provides location information to enable applications as varied as patient safety, automatic bed tracking and workflow analysis.

To track assets with a Radianse IPS, the provider said that small, battery-powered transmitters — Radianse ID-tags — are attached to medical devices. The ID-tags transmit continuous active RFID information to Radianse receivers plugged into a hospital's existing local area network. Web-based location software analyzes and displays on a computer screen the exact location in real time. Data is also stored for transfer to any standards-based clinical or hospital information system.

Troy Kenyon, CEO and president of St. Croix Systems, stated, "Combined with a Radianse IPS, our total asset management solution will enable our customers to always know where equipment is located and make preventive maintenance more efficient, which will further support preparedness for surprise JCAHO audits."

On Sunday, June 6, Radianse said it will join with Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, a pioneer in women's health and virtually every area of medicine, at AAMI for "Evaluating the Performance and Return on Investment of an Indoor Positioning System." The presentation is based in part on Brigham and Women's process for choosing a cost-effective solution to track medical devices such as external pacers, infusion pumps and telemetry transmitters. A case study on using an IPS to track patients at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, also will be presented.

Michael Dempsey, CEO and chief technology officer of Radianse, said, "Everything about a Radianse IPS is designed to remove the high cost and complexity of determining location. We fully expect to make a real impact on asset shrinkage, which costs healthcare millions annually.

Dempsey added that Radianse can also see great potential for using location information to make products, systems and processes more intelligent. "Automatic device configuration, automatic log on and log off clinical applications, and real-time workflow adjustments are among the advancements possible and practical with a Radianse IPS," he said.

Also at AAMI, L. Michael Fraai, director of biomedical engineering at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Radianse's Dempsey will discuss performance and payback of an IPS at two Harvard Medical School hospitals — one for asset tracking and one for patient location.

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