Support our online development, and advance our onground research initiatives in free market economics, as we seek to showcase the brightest Next-Gen minds.
THE ME-P DISCLAIMER: Posts, comments and opinions do not necessarily represent iMBA, Inc., but become our property after submission. Copyright © 2006 to-date. iMBA, Inc allows colleges, universities, medical and financial professionals and related clinics, hospitals and non-profit healthcare organizations to distribute our proprietary essays, photos, videos, audios and other documents; etc. However, please review copyright and usage information for each individual asset before submission to us, and/or placement on your publication or web site. Attestation references, citations and/or back-links are required. All other assets are property of the individual copyright holder.
Understanding Competing Wireless Technologies
By Davd Piasecki, with
Hope Hetico; RN, MHA
The two wireless technologies currently competing to provide hospitals with better systems for managing equipment inventories are (WiFi) and active RFID.
Wireless-Fidelity [WiFi]
WiFi is the name of the popular wireless networking technology that uses radio waves to provide wireless high-speed Internet connections. The WiFi Alliance is the non-profit organization that owns WiFi (registered trademark) and the term specifically defines WiFi as any “wireless local area network products that are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’s 802.11 standards.” Yet, less than 5 percent of North American healthcare facilities are equipped with these real-time locating systems, so the market is currently up for grabs.
WiFi Pros
The advantage of WiFi-based real time locating systems (RTLSs) is that most hospitals already have WiFi networks in place, and many medical devices are equipped with WiFi functionality. Moreover, WiFi vendors such as Aeroscout, Ekahau, and PanGo market their products based on a standards-based non-proprietary functionality. The downside of WiFi systems is that hospitals will need to install additional access points to bring the needed functionality to existing networks.
RFID Pros
On the other hand, RFID vendors such as RF Code and Radianse point to the wide application of RFID for asset tracking, and to the technology’s longevity in the industry. Still, RFID tags remain suspect because their ability to efficiently track DME may not be private or secure. Increasingly, WiFi seems more ubiquitous than RFID.
Finally, of the three WiFi major vendors, only Ekahau makes a point of stressing that its inventory system is based only on WiFi and not RFID, so the issue isn’t clear cut. Perhaps it will take both technologies to deploy RTLSs for hospitals.
General Recommendations
As a general recommendation, RFID is not yet practical for most small to mid-sized healthcare entities or medical clinics looking to automate their inventory-related transactions (though it does work for other applications such as with returnable containers and asset tracking).
RFID Hype
Despite the hype over RFID, bar codes are not becoming obsolete and are still very effective at quickly and accurately identifying products, locations, and documents. Unless there exists an application where bar codes simply don’t work, or where RFID offers a significant advantage over bar codes, use bar codes. Even if an application that cries out for RFID exists, hospital material management administrators may want to consider waiting (if possible) as the cost of the technology comes down.
Both RFID and WFI Needed
According to Robert M. Wachter MD, Professor and Chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine and Associate Chairman of Department of Medicine, and Lynne and Marc Benioff Endowed Chair in Hospital Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, and Chief of the Medical Service at UCSF Medical Center [personal communication], both should be used.
Ultimately, of course, we do need both bar coding and RFIDs, and we need rigorous studies looking at what works and what doesn’t. But, you have to start somewhere. Even though the evidence continues to trail, based on what I know today, if I was a hospital ready to get into the IT game, I’d go with bar coding first.
Assessment
In the next few years, standards will be finalized, hardware prices will drop, software will become more readily available, and, more importantly, the bugs will be worked out of all these systems.
Conclusion
And so, your thoughts and comments on this Medical Executive-Post are appreciated. Feel free to review our top-left column, and top-right sidebar materials, links, URLs and related websites, too. Then, be sure to subscribe to the ME-P. It is fast, free and secure.
Link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/HealthcareFinancialsthePostForcxos
Speaker: If you need a moderator or speaker for an upcoming event, Dr. David E. Marcinko; MBA – Publisher-in-Chief of the Executive-Post – is available for seminar or speaking engagements. Contact: MarcinkoAdvisors@msn.com
Get our Widget: Get this widget!
Our Other Print Books and Related Information Sources:
Practice Management: http://www.springerpub.com/prod.aspx?prod_id=23759
Physician Financial Planning: http://www.jbpub.com/catalog/0763745790
Medical Risk Management: http://www.jbpub.com/catalog/9780763733421
Healthcare Organizations: www.HealthcareFinancials.com
Health Administration Terms: www.HealthDictionarySeries.com
Physician Advisors: www.CertifiedMedicalPlanner.com
Sponsors Welcomed
And, credible sponsors and like-minded advertisers are always welcomed.
Link: https://healthcarefinancials.wordpress.com/2007/11/11/advertise
Share this:
Filed under: Information Technology, Practice Management | Tagged: aeroscout, David Piasecki, DME, Ekahau, hope hetico, Hospital inventory, inventory management, inventory tracking, PanGo, Radianse, RFID, Robert Wachter, RTLS, WiFi, WiFi Alliance | 5 Comments »
The Leading Business Education Network for Doctors, Financial Advisors and Health Industry Consultants 