Ekahau’s Wi-Fi-Based Real-Time Location Alerts Give Security Instant Visibility into Staff Emergencies and Ekahau’s Temperature Monitoring Solution Keeps Patient Consumables Safe.
Challenge
As a leading hospital treating 196,000 outpatients and 4,600 inpatients each year, staff and patient safety are top priorities at Memorial Healthcare in Owosso, Michigan. While Memorial Healthcare had a safety alert system in place, the hospital could not see the location of a distressed caller unless that party provided this information. Access to location visibility was missing, lengthening emergency response times on campus. In addition, Memorial Healthcare’s 221,000 square feet of patient areas and large campus footprint made locating an individual very challenging. If the hospital could enable 2-way messaging and automatically provide the location of a distressed party quickly without voice prompts or map look-ups, hospital staff and security teams could act quickly to mitigate injuries, in cases of staff duress in the Behavioral Health Unit.
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Solution
Memorial Healthcare chose Ekahau’s staff safety alert solution because it provides two-way messaging that is easy to activate, with built-in location intelligence giving security and staff real-time location visibility. By giving Memorial Healthcare’s security teams real-time visibility into staff locations during emergencies, the hospital expects to reduce response times to staff duress incidents logged by the housekeeping staff, techs, interns, doctors and nurses working in its 10,000 square foot Behavioral Health Unit.
Ekahau’s safety alert solution pinpoints the location of an emergency and sends an instant alert to responsible parties in the vicinity, using the hospital’s existing Cisco Wi-Fi network. Staff members in Memorial Healthcare’s Behavioral Health Unit simply wear re-chargeable Ekahau badges on break-away lanyards at the start of their shift. If a patient attempts to attack a caregiver, the caregiver pulls down on his or her safety badge and their location and help request is displayed on the other staff members’ and security team Ekahau badges. Greater staff visibility not only gives employees peace of mind, it reduces the chance of injury by cutting down response times and helping to deter violence.
In addition to ensuring staff safety, Memorial Healthcare also uses the Ekahau RTLS solution and its Cisco Wireless LAN to safeguard temperature-sensitive patient consumables like blood, tissue, and medicines used in a variety of patient treatments. Ekahau’s wireless temperature sensors are placed inside of refrigeration units, automatically recording and communicating real-time temperatures in regular intervals. The Ekahau temperature sensing and monitoring solution ensures that near-breach temperatures trigger text and email alerts to Biomedical teams before spoilage impacts patient safety. The hospital no longer records all refrigerator temperatures manually; Ekahau Vision™ software automatically logs all temperatures for Joint Commission compliance documentation, without the use of manual logs that are prone to human error.
Why Choose Ekahau for Patient and Staff Tracking and Temperature Control?
Memorial Healthcare chose the Ekahau Real-Time Location System (RTLS) for its ability to offer a safety alert solution with both 2-way messaging and real-time location alerting, and for Ekahau’s advanced temperature monitoring solution. Ekahau badges offer 2-way communications via LEDs screen and hospital security teams can even monitor staff entry and exit into restricted geo-fenced zones via text and email alerts. Both solutions are cost effective by using the existing Cisco Wireless LAN and avoiding new, dedicated cabling infrastructure requirements.
The Ekahau safety alert system is comprehensive and effective at safeguarding caregivers and patient consumables, providing Memorial Healthcare with a comprehensive solution. Ekahau RTLS also offers high reliability for mission critical applications and a high degree of scalability if the hospital expands its RTLS deployment to adopt patient and asset tracking applications, in the future.
“Keeping caregivers visible and monitoring patient consumables using our Cisco Wireless LAN is game-changing. Ekahau RTLS is cost-effective to implement over Cisco Wi-Fi, reliable and instantly makes staff and patients feel safer,” notes Frank Fear, CIO at Memorial Healthcare.
“Ekahau is proud to help Memorial Healthcare ensure staff and patient safety with location-based automation solutions that leverage the hospital’s existing wireless LAN investment and work reliably,” states Mark Norris, President and CEO of Ekahau.
