Published on February 27th, 2013 | by Roger Chu
Real-Time Location and Mobile Health Solutions Gain Traction, Show ROI
According to a recent presentation at a Stanford Business forum, healthcare Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) is an emerging market equaling $325 million worldwide, with an addressable market that is larger. Intelligent Insights on Wednesday ramped up the sector by announcing that it won a $543 million contract with the Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) to deploy RTLS technologies across 152 medical centers in 5 years.
RTLS is expected to enable “operational efficiency, quality, compliance, decreased operational costs, reduced delays in patient care, and increased staff productivity,” said Kimberly Brayley, Director, RTLS Project Management Office at the VA in a prepared statement.
The VA plans to gather data from millions of RTLS and RFID tags on its medical equipment, surgical instruments, and supplies, the statement explained, to ultimately improve visibility, analytics, and intelligence into operational processes.
“Initial use cases include asset management, cath lab supply management, sterile processing workflow, and automated temperature monitoring,” the statement noted. Looking into the future, potential use cases may include “patient
wander management, hand hygiene monitoring, emergency department workflow, and operating room workflow.”
Already, mobile health enabled patient engagement solutions are starting to pay off at Cullman Regional Medical Center (CRMC), according to chief nursing officer Cheryl Bailey. CRMC, a 150-bed hospital and Tier 1 heart and stroke center reduced readmissions by 7 percent and increased their Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores by over 60 percent within six months of implementing Good to Go, a recently launched mobile health platform by ExperiaHealth.
Cullman provides clinical staff with iTouch devices. “Privacy and security are concerns, and we don’t want our staff using their iPhone for Facebook during their work time,” Bailey added. “We can manage the connectivity of the [iTouch] to suit our needs.”
Despite the “wow factor” and cutting-edge appeal of mobile technologies, before deploying an RTLS or mHealth solution, John Kenagy, MD, of Kenagy Associates recommends that healthcare organizations identify a clear ROI, via data that presents actionable insights to improve patient care.