Location services in Healthcare – designing the network to support critical services

It’s been some time since wireless technology has been considered as a ‘nice-to-have’ in the Healthcare sector. Whether it’s providing connectivity for connected medical and IoT devices, enabling Electronic Patient Record (EPR) access on tablets, supplying internet access to patients and guests, allowing roaming connectivity for video and phone calls, or allowing access to services for public sector colleagues through Govroam, wireless connectivity is a vital part of the modern healthcare environment.

With wireless already an essential part of these environments, organisations now have the opportunity to bring more value from their investments, through the implementation of location services. With the right implementation, these services can offer organisations significant additional value that impacts patient experience, clinical efficiency, and staff morale – while saving money.

The benefits of location services

Deploying location services in a Healthcare environment can offer a host of benefits to a variety of Healthcare environments, particularly in the realm of processes and workflow optimisation. The integration of an Electronic Bed and Capacity Management System (EBCMS), using the wireless network to capture current availability and status of beds, can help reduce patient flow and waiting times. The provision of real-time visibility into the movement of patients, staff, and medical equipment can identify bottlenecks and help organisations to streamline their processes, and reduce waiting times and improve patient flow.

At the same time, location services can be invaluable in aiding organisations in maintaining a clear and up-to-date picture of not only their patients and staff, but the critical equipment and assets required for timely and effective care. Equipment can be tracked in real time, reducing the time spent locating it, as well as minimising inventory loss and improving overall asset utilisation. Going further, it can also assist in preventative maintenance, ensuring that equipment is serviced on time and available when needed– enhancing patient care. Network-connected sensors can be implemented in fridges tasked with monitoring temperatures for the safe storage of medication, blood, and vaccines, helping organisations to report for compliance and audits, as well as providing alerts should the temperatures fall outside of a preset range.

Location services have great potential in improving patient experiences, and enhancing the safety of patients and staff as well. Indoor navigation systems can provide new patients or visitors with wayfinding assistance to reduce potential anxiety. Personalised content can be delivered via browser-based and mobile applications, providing patients with appointment reminders, health material, and facility information. By tracking the movement of individuals in real time, organisations can quickly locate patients in emergency situations, comply with safety protocols, and help to prevent unauthorised access to restricted areas. Potential sources of infections or instances of high contact can be identified more easily, and the implementation of contact tracing protocols can help contain the spread of infectious diseases. It’s important that such deployments of location services should always prioritise patient privacy and safety, as well as adhere to relevant regulations and guidelines to ensure data security and protection, as well as the safety of patients and staff.

Implementing the right technology

Location services run on a combination of technologies, depending on the needs of both the organisation and the application. RTLS (Real-Time Location Services), RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), and BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) are all used for location tracking and asset management, but their capabilities and use cases are each distinct.

RTLS is capable of providing real-time tracking and monitoring of assets or people within a defined area, allowing for continuous and dynamic location updates. RFID focuses on identifying and capturing data from individual items or objects as they pass through predefined RFID readers. While RFID can provide item identification and presence detection by telling you when an item passes one of these readers, it does not inherently offer the real-time tracking capabilities of RTLS. BLE, meanwhile, operates using wireless technology like RTLS, but consumes less power in doing so by enabling devices to broadcast their presence to nearby receivers. Its low power consumption makes it suitable for applications where power efficiency and tag longevity are important.

So, while RTLS, RFID, and BLE are all used for aspects of tracking and asset management, they each have different areas in which their use is most appropriate. RTLS offers real-time location tracking with enhanced accuracy and contextual data; BLE can complement this with power-efficient room-level accuracy; and RFID is best when primarily focusing on identification and data capture stemming from RFID tags moving through predetermined thresholds. Making a choice between the technologies will depend on the specific requirements of the application, the need for real-time tracking, power consumption, and the level of accuracy required.

Designing your network

Designing an RTLS-capable network is challenging due to the additional number of APs typically required, which when introduced to a network can increase its management overhead and potential cross-channel interference. Whilst AP radios can be turned off to avoid excessive co-channel interference, it’s important to also be mindful that doing so can risk creating holes in the network’s coverage. Each location will also have specific radio frequency (RF) characteristics that need to be fully understood and addressed.

As a result, it’s critical that organisations conduct a full RF survey and design, in order to gain a complete understanding of the RF environment. Doing so will ensure that sufficient APs are placed in a location such that the accuracy required by the organisation can be achieved by the RTLS platform – without compromising on coverage and capacity. Calibration of the wireless network is then highly recommended, as it will provide a better level of location precision and reliability for RTLS services. Calibration helps fine-tune the system by establishing a reference point and understanding the signal characteristics in the environment, resulting in enhanced accuracy. By performing a site survey and collecting signal measurements at known locations, a baseline can be established with which to compare and optimise the location estimation algorithms. This leads to more precise positioning, and reduces errors in location tracking.

Summary

Implementing location services in wireless networks is complex. The design of the wireless network is critical, and a full understanding of the RF environment – including attenuating objects, interference, and multi-path distortion sources – is vital for success. Calibration is also crucial for achieving accurate and reliable location tracking with an RTLS solution – it improves accuracy, compensates for environmental factors, optimises system performance, and validates the solution’s quality. It’s vital that trusts find a partner that understands their objectives, and has the ability to support them in designing a network capable of supporting a host of applications. You can read more about location services with our accompanying PDF asset, or get in touch with one of our Healthcare experts at health@itgl.com, to find out more about location services  within your organisation.