Innovations In Medical Equipment Tracking

For the small office, medical equipment tracking is really a non issue. The diversity of your instrumentation is at such a level that inventory and tracking is a matter of looking around and saying, “There it is.” And that fits your needs exactly.

But in larger, more diverse facilities, medical equipment tracking can be a headache at best, and a nightmare at worst. Different floors of a hospital or different offices in a clinic have constantly shifting needs. And someone has to keep track of each machine that will answer each need.

There have always been paper tracking sheets – sign in/sign out logs. They form a basic system, but they are dependent on how well they are maintained. And the learning curve can vary so much between personnel that it is difficult to keep the consistency needed for the paper based system. And there has to be a person to check the log against where the instrument actually is.

Bar code tracking was the next step in inventory control. More information was able to be coded onto the bar code, but there was still the problem of the staff’s familiarity with the system, and the adherence of the staff to the inventory protocols.

It is not always a matter of staff resistance but of clinical necessity. The ER is a major consumer of inventory, but when do they have the time to track a piece of medical equipment?

Fortunately, a new system tags each piece of medical equipment with a ultrasound tag that is picked up by a localized receiver that is Wifi enabled. The ultrasound signal, invisible to humans, transmits all identifiers to the receiver which then goes into the computer system. All information is then ready to review in real time.

A state has been reached that will allow real time inventory to be preformed by the instruments themselves. No more chasing down that infusion pump. The pump will tell you where it is and who has it checked out. This is light years over the old paper and pencil tracking systems and a real step forward in making equipment even more user-friendly.