Michael Maurer, CEO of MGM Solutions, provides answers to RTLS risks.
Hospital leaders need to reevaluate their understanding of RTLS technology, take a realistic look at what their needs are, and make purchase decisions about what works for their use cases.
WOOLWICH TOWNSHIP, N.J. (PRWEB) May 07, 2018
Over the years, more and more hospitals and health care centers have used a Real Time Locating System (RTLS) to keep track of patients, staff, and important supplies. While RTLS can be a system that protects expensive medical equipment, more importantly it is set in place to protect the lives of patients and staff. Unfortunately, new data is now showing that many of these systems are falling behind, leaving hospitals without a secure tracking method and putting patients at risk of injury or even death. According to recent research, some of the systems encounter so many coverage gaps that tracking was effective only 40 percent of the time that it was in use. 1
“Considering the positive impact that RTLS can have on a medical center, these gaps in coverage are disturbing,” says Michael Maurer, CEO of MGM Solutions. “Being able to track individuals and equipment can lead to greater patient care, a better use of supplies, and even save lives – systems that perform less than half of the time are leaving patients and staff unprotected.”
Though the market for RTLS healthcare technologies is estimated to reach over $2 billion by 2020, per Maurer, the technology needs a layered network to remain accurate and sustain that growth. Many organizations don’t fully understand the strain they put on their networks or the challenges that arise keeping devices connected on a Wi-Fi-based RTLS. Not addressing these connectivity issues can significantly waste time and money.
Per Maurer, RTLS systems that rely on Wi-Fi are at an increased risk of failure and coverage gaps due to several issues:
- All hospitals are at risk of occasional Wi-Fi failure; while this can be a nuisance under the best of circumstances, it becomes more contentious when a real time locating system is depending on it to keep track of employees, patients, and valuable supplies.
- Wi-Fi RTLS systems have also been shown to have a very limited tracking area. Wi-Fi is generally limited to the inside of the hospital or campus and, even then, cannot always penetrate through thick walls, leaving the tracking system at a significant loss.
With RTLS expected to become the wave of the future in the health care industry 2, Maurer says it’s even more imperative that the technology be streamlined and more reliable, so that it can deliver value to health care facilities.
“Hospital leaders need to reevaluate their understanding of RTLS technology, take a realistic look at what their needs are, and make purchase decisions about what works for their use cases,” said Maurer.
MGM Solutions operates entirely using lower frequency Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems. While these RTLS systems work in a similar way to those that rely on Wi-Fi, they are proving to be more reliable and less likely to encounter problems associated with Wi-Fi. Reliable device communications provide much greater accuracy which helps staff more quickly locate individuals and equipment to be of greater benefit to hospital staff.
As a leader in the RTLS industry, Maurer has spent the last twenty-five years studying the benefits and draw-backs of RTLS systems. MGM Solutions offers several different types of RTLS systems such as SecurTRAK which are put in place to track patient and medical equipment while also providing staff with an alert button that they can use in case of an emergency. PatienTRAK is proving to be useful among elderly patients and those who suffer from diseases such as dementia since it helps staff to maintain the constant location of patients who might wander out of their room or even outside of the hospital. PanicALERT is another option for centers that do not want to track anyone but instead offer their staff a mobile safety button.
The goal of MGM Solutions is to offer technological systems that will save health centers money, protect valuable equipment, and keep individuals safe using up-to-date IoT products.
About MGM Solutions
MGM Solutions was incorporated in April 1987 with a vision to create a Real Time Locating System (RTLS) that can accurately track and protect patients, hospital assets and medical staff. Over the years they have developed a patented triangulation that integrates a blend of radio frequency, diffused infrared, and low frequency radio frequency (RF) to accurately track patients, staff and equipment in real-time within medical facilities and across large hospital campuses. CEO and founder, Michael Maurer, is a Navy veteran and values the need for all veterans to receive quality healthcare with equitable access to physician care and hospitalization. Contact: http://www.mgm-solutions.com.
1. “Department of Veterans Affairs IT Project In Danger of 'Catastrophic Failure'.” Government Technology: State & Local Government News Articles, http://www.govtech.com/computing/Department-of-Veterans-Affairs-IT-Project-In-Danger-of-Catastrophic-Failure.html.
2. ReportsnReports. “Healthcare RTLS Market Growing at 32.9% CAGR: 2020 Global Forecasts in a Research Report.” PR Newswire: News Distribution, Targeting and Monitoring, 11 Sept. 2014, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/healthcare-rtls-market-growing-at-329-cagr-2020-global-forecasts-in-a-research-report-274752201.html.