Sphere3® Introduces Trackit!™

Mismanagement of Assets utilization can cost hospital’s millions each year.

Sphere3®, the industry leader in medical device alarm and alert analytics and hospital alignment of medical device strategy, has partnered with TriVestige Consulting to provide Trackit!™ consulting services for RTLS selection, asset management, utilization, and staff workload.

Trackit!™ employs the core principles Sphere3 has used to help hospitals leverage existing technology, plan for new, and identify how to manage the data associated with the purchase. This vendor agnostic approach to market provides greater insight for hospitals in both the selection and application of best of bread products, and best practices processes.

"Our partnership with TriVestige brings cross industry expertise to our growing client base. Our focus is making the patient stay better. Providing the things they need in a timely manner not only improves patient perception but enhances their ability to heal faster. There are great products out there in both the software and hardware - our job is to make the process easier for the hospital" CEO, Kourtney Govro

TriVestige consulting has depth of knowledge into best practices in the distribution and logistics industry. Their expertise is in process optimization, automation, software, and robotics. They provide better throughput results, reduce staff workload, and decrease spending, resulting in millions saved.

"TriVestige is focused on building solid content with replicable processes and enhanced delivery of existing services. We are excited to bring these proven techniques to the healthcare market."

Contact us info@sphere3consulting.com

The Art of Location

Please turn left.....Please turn left.... The GPS lady repeated herself as I basically made a circle..... "When possible please make a legal U turn...." at this point I decided that my car was lost. How was this possible? She is supposed to know where I am at any point in time and direct me to go.... I think we have grown so accustomed to location accuracy that the idea of Lack of accuracy in hospital RTLS seems really strange.

The lawsuit that Centrak has filed against Ekahau is at the heart of location accuracy in a hospital. Products like Awarepoint and Ekahau are at a significant disadvantage to products like Centrak and Sonitor based on their ability to get bedside accuracy. Let's face it, if of you are including a RTLS system in your hospital you want to be able to do more than locate a pump in a room or cancel a call light. In the very least you want the ability to build into bedside location and accuracy. This enables the RTLS system to integrate to the EMR and provide meaningful integration of data associated with

The challenge is to identify where the ultimate accuracy needs to be - or what technology needs to hold it. Products like Capsuletech encapsulate it in their bedside interface. The neuron can easily forward it to the medical record. Products like Centrak are more independent and interface with multiple systems.

RTLS has been somewhat of a novelty "nice to have" product for healthcare. However, the increased need to be Lean and it's ability to support the legal processes has caused a real interest among hospitals. I will caution hospitals that the flash you see in a demonstration - moving dots on a page are really worthless without a quality reporting mechanism.

Leveraging the investment for real value comes from the ability to interpret the data associated with the movement, and utilize the information for meaningful automation of processes.

Location, Utilization, and Movement

I had an interesting call with Will Lukens, Vice President of CENTRAK, a Real Time Locating System (RTLS) company. There are a number of debates swirling around RTLS such as what’s the best technology to use? (Wi-Fi, RF, Hybrid - Check out JHIM from Fall 2008 for further reading on the technology.) No matter what technology you use in the background, RTLS is a great mechanism to track the effectiveness of workflow for staff and “stuff”.

Step One is always to decide “what” you want to accomplish prior to deciding “how” or with which technology you want to use. The "what" or goal froma workflow perspective can be evaluated in three areas Location, Utilization, and Movement. Using these areas you can evaluate numerous abilities to track implemented technologies and initiatives.

LOCATION: It’s been reported that caregivers currently spend less than 30% of their time at the patient bedside, but that’s an average which is not applicable for every facility. Using RTLS a hospital could track the actual time frames that a caregiver spends with a patient and set a baseline for their specific facility.

Location is the portion of the puzzle that has the most value and the most apprehension. The ability to track caregiver’s locations with detailed reports of who, when is sometimes labeled “Big Brother” and “Micro-Management” and honestly, would you be pleased to wear a tag that tracked your movement the entire time you are at the office? “Bob, you spent way too much time at the coffee pot.” Using this as a coporate means of improvement as opposed to individual tool for punishment is really key.

UTILIZATION: “Work Around Artists” is a term that Karen Cox, Executive Vice President of Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City coined in the last issue of Ingrams. That name captures the innovative spirit of the caregiver. They are the modern day MacGyvers using available resources to find more efficient paths.

Often hospitals will implement initiatives, or provide technologies with the desire to see an improvement in something that is lacking. For example, if there are high infection rates they may implement a hand washing initiative and provide a new sink in every patient room. What if the utilization of the sink could be documented automatically – even more so what if that information could be correlated back to the reduction of infection rate.

MOVEMENT: Frank Lloyd Wright would watch people’s movement habit’s to design walk ways. Once he didn’t put in a single side walk at a University until after the students had worn paths to show where he should be putting those walk-ways. RTLS is the modern day observation and automated documentation of movement habits. A caregiver walks 1 to 4 miles per day (depending on size of facility and quantity of patients) often a technology is provided to reduce that foot traffic. Hospitals can have humans track the movement with clipboards and pens or pedometers, but if they have an RTLS system that information is being collected.

Before you begin your journey - A great resource when planning RTLS purchase and implementation Robert Konishi’s RFID-RTLS Strategy and Planning Guide. Robert is the former CTO of UCLA Medical Center, and Current CEO of T2 Technology Group. According Konishi, there are four main areas that can be assessed to link to value when evaluating the RTLS system for equipment tracking:

• Cost savings associated with rental or duplicate purchases
• Lost Revenue and Opportunity Cost due to utilization
• Lost Time for Staff
• Quality of Patient Care, Throughput, and Regulatory

Konishi provides very helpful insights in the article from RFID News (http://www.rfidproductnews.com/pages/searchview.php?key=konishi&p=issues/2008.03/medical2.php) and a subsequent RFID-RTLS Strategy and Planning Guide.

The power of RTLS is the ability to track specific information. That information can become a metric which can be used to help the hospital better assess their workflow choices. A metric on it’s own is important – every business needs to track it’s ability to improve – however correlating those metrics with other data is the most powerful way to look at the data. That's why Sphere3 has developed our automated web based Sphere3 Scorecard™.

We look forward to sharing it with you.