Best Hospital Asset Tracking Software in 2026: How US Hospitals Compare RTLS Vendors
The best hospital asset tracking software for a US hospital in 2026 is a real-time location system (RTLS) that finds equipment at room level, runs on infrastructure your team can support, and sends location into Epic and your CMMS. The main RTLS vendors serving US hospitals include Kontakt.io, CenTrak, Securitas Healthcare, Sonitor, Zebra, Midmark and AiRISTA. Choose the one whose accuracy holds up in your own rooms during a pilot, and whose platform can grow past equipment into staff safety, hand hygiene and patient flow.
The cost of not knowing where equipment is shows up in nursing time. At Riverside Medical Center, the combined time staff spent looking for infusion pumps added up to a full-time staff position. Most of that time never appears on a budget line, which is why asset tracking often gets approved on rental spend and purchases avoided, and then pays back in caregiver hours as well.
This guide compares seven vendors on the criteria US buyers use most, explains how RTLS fits alongside your CMMS, and lays out how to pilot one.
Key Takeaways
- Shortlist on three tests: location precision proven in your own rooms, infrastructure your IT team can support, and integrations that put location inside Epic and your CMMS.
- Ask every vendor which precision tier each use case needs. Zone-level location suits basic equipment visibility, while room-level certainty is what lets you automate nurse call, hand hygiene and patient-device association.
- None of these vendors is a CMMS. Decide early which system holds the master equipment record, and make the RTLS follow it.
- Judge cost over five years: tags, sensors or gateways, software, installation, integration and battery replacement, set against rentals avoided and purchases deferred.
Is asset tracking the same as asset management or barcode inventory?
No. Asset tracking shows where a device is right now; asset management tells you when it is due for service. A CMMS or enterprise asset management (EAM) system holds maintenance history and work orders. Barcode inventory confirms what you own when someone scans it. RTLS asset tracking adds live location, status and utilization, which neither of the others can supply.
Most US hospitals run all three, and the useful question is how they connect. Our own Asset Tracker, for example, records a next maintenance date per asset, but our documentation recommends that asset IDs mirror the naming convention of your CMMS, so the CMMS stays the equipment system of record and RTLS adds where-and-when on top. The rest of this guide compares RTLS vendors only.
How we compared the vendors
We scored each vendor on six criteria: location granularity (zone, room, bay or sub-meter) and how the vendor proves it; the infrastructure it needs, whether your Wi-Fi access points or its own sensors, readers and cabling; integrations with Epic and other EHRs, the CMMS, nurse call and your wireless platform; other uses on the same platform, such as staff duress, hand hygiene, temperature monitoring and patient flow; multi-site administration across campuses and buildings; and five-year total cost of ownership across hardware, software, installation, integration and batteries.
Side-by-side comparison of healthcare RTLS asset tracking vendors
The vendors differ most on locating technology, the infrastructure each one needs and how much else runs on the same platform.
What are the best healthcare asset tracking system solutions?
Each vendor below is a credible option, and the best one depends on the precision, infrastructure and integrations your use cases need. Every entry ends with what to confirm during evaluation.
Kontakt.io
Our platform tracks equipment with BLE tags that report through BLE-enabled access points from Cisco, HPE or Mist, or through our Portal Light gateways. That gives zone-level location with no new cabling. Where a use case needs room-level certainty, battery-powered Beam sensors on the ceiling add infrared, which does not pass through walls the way BLE does, and they need no cabling or Power over Ethernet. BLE runs through Cisco Catalyst 9120 or newer access points with Cisco Spaces, and the platform is Cisco and Mist certified. Asset Tag 2 batteries are rated for up to 8 years, and the same platform also runs hand hygiene, staff duress, temperature monitoring and nurse call cancellation. We also support open BLE protocols, so third-party BLE tags can be used.
Our Epic integration is prebuilt and listed in the Epic Showroom, so location reaches clinicians where they already work.
To confirm: room-level certainty needs Beam sensors in those rooms, because access points alone give zone-level location.
Best for: health systems that want equipment location inside Epic, running on the Cisco, HPE or Mist Wi-Fi they already own, with room-level automation added where it pays off.
CenTrak
CenTrak gives hospitals a choice of locating technologies from one vendor: BLE, Gen2IR, LF, UHF and Wi-Fi. It describes room- and bay-level locating for asset management, includes PAR-level and preventive maintenance functions, and says the same infrastructure can serve staff and patient safety and environmental monitoring across the enterprise.
To confirm: the fully wireless option runs on BLE, so ask what each of the other modes requires in your building. CenTrak names CMMS and EHR systems as categories, not products, so ask which are live at a customer today.
Best for: hospitals that want to choose among several locating technologies from one vendor.
Securitas Healthcare
Securitas Healthcare offers asset tracking on its BLE and MobileView platform, with the stated aim of tracking medical devices and mobile assets across the enterprise. Infant protection, staff protection, temperature monitoring and patient flow run on the same supplier’s platform. HFM Magazine reported in 2022 that its T2s tag provides room-level accuracy.
To confirm: infrastructure requirements and named integrations are not published, and the room-level claim rests on a third-party report from 2022, so ask for a current accuracy test in your rooms.
Best for: health systems that want asset tracking alongside infant protection and staff protection from one supplier.
Sonitor
Sonitor locates with Ultrasound Low Energy (ULE) and describes its approach as certainty-based and high-precision. The cloud-based platform also covers staff duress, nurse call automation, patient flow, hand hygiene and specimen tracking.
To confirm: infrastructure needs and named integrations are not published, so ask for the full bill of materials for your floor plan and the list of live integrations.
Best for: hospitals that put room certainty ahead of every other criterion.
Zebra
Zebra tracks infusion pumps, wheelchairs and imaging devices with RFID and barcode across one or multiple facilities. MotionWorks Enterprise adds BLE and Ultra-Wideband (UWB), and integrates with ServiceNow Hardware Asset Management.
To confirm: RFID reads depend on fixed readers where you want a read, and location granularity is not published on the healthcare page, so ask where readers would sit and what precision each area gets.
Best for: hospitals already standardized on Zebra RFID and barcode hardware.
Midmark
Midmark’s Wireless IR Sensory Network 3.0 combines BLE with infrared for room-certain precision and removes the wiring of traditional IR systems. Staff duress, patient flow and temperature monitoring through Primex run on the same platform.
To confirm: Midmark names Epic (through Epic ASAP) and Primex, so ask about your CMMS and nurse call.
Best for: hospitals that want infrared room certainty without the wiring of older IR systems.
AiRISTA
AiRISTA runs Wi-Fi and BLE location over your existing wireless infrastructure, and an angle-of-arrival (AoA) gateway adds sub-meter accuracy. Personnel safety, patient flow, temperature monitoring, hand hygiene and wander management run on the same platform.
To confirm: sub-meter accuracy depends on the AoA gateways, and named integrations are not published, so ask which areas would get gateways and which systems are live.
Best for: sites that want sub-meter precision over their existing wireless network.
What are key features to look for in an asset tracking system for healthcare?
The features to look for are room-level location, clean and dirty status, PAR levels, rental and maintenance visibility, a mobile finder, and Epic and CMMS integration. Each should come with a demonstration in your own building, and the table pairs each feature with the question we would ask any vendor.
Our Asset Tracker compares real-time room-level counts against Target and Critical thresholds, records a Rental Due Date per asset and reports the number of rentals over 90 days. It also filters assets by next maintenance date or past-due status while showing each one’s real-time location.
Room-level accuracy and what it takes to get it
Room-level accuracy means the system names the correct room, not a nearby one, every time a use case depends on it. Real-time means location arrives fast enough for the decision it supports. A floor-level answer is enough to find a wheelchair, and it is not enough to cancel a nurse call or associate a pump with a patient.
We locate equipment at two precision tiers. Zone-level location comes through BLE-enabled Wi-Fi access points or Portal Light gateways, with updates arriving within 3 to 60 seconds, which suits staff duress visibility, asset visibility and wayfinding. Room-level certainty comes through battery-powered Beam sensors on ceilings that pair BLE with infrared, and it is the tier for automation: nurse call cancellation, nurse credentials in MyChart Bedside and dynamic PAR levels.
The difference matters because BLE signals bleed into adjacent rooms. A location estimate that sounds tight in an open area can span several patient rooms in a hospital, while infrared does not penetrate walls. Frontline staff also stop trusting a system quickly: with as few as three false positives, they typically lose confidence and abandon it entirely. Test any vendor’s accuracy claim in your own rooms, at your own wall types, before you sign.
Deploy a real-time asset tracking system in your hospital on your existing Wi-Fi infrastructure
Zone-level tracking can run on your existing Wi-Fi if your access points can receive BLE. We support Cisco Catalyst 9120 or newer access points with Cisco Spaces Connector 3.1 or later, which removes the need for separate BLE-to-Wi-Fi gateway hardware, and BLE-enabled HPE and Mist access points work too. Where none of these is available, Portal Light gateways receive the tags instead. Room-level certainty usually needs sensors in the room. Beams mount on the ceiling with no cabling or Power over Ethernet, installation averages 6 minutes per room or 20 hours for a 200-bed hospital, and a Portal Beam runs on battery for up to 4 years with factory default settings.
Multi-site health systems need one data model
Multi-site health systems need a platform that models every campus separately, controls who sees which site and rolls out hospital by hospital. Sharing one Epic integration and one data model also lets you compare utilization across facilities.
Our platform organizes locations as Campus, Building, Floor and Room, with rooms as the foundational unit, and we recommend creating a separate campus for each site that is managed independently. Campuses can be assigned to a group so that every member of that group can access data and settings for those locations, and nobody else can.
One platform for assets, hand hygiene, staff safety and temperature
Several RTLS vendors run asset tracking, hand hygiene compliance, staff duress and temperature monitoring on one platform, and that is where most of the long-term value sits. One badge and one sensor network serving several use cases spreads the infrastructure cost and gives IT one system to secure.
On our platform, hand hygiene monitoring detects when a staff member enters a patient room and whether they sanitized on the way in and on the way out. The same Smart Badge lets staff raise a duress alert that sends responders their real-time location, and the room-level tier drives nurse call cancellation. Temperature monitoring covers refrigerators, freezers, warmers and storage rooms, and probes ship with a 3-year NIST calibration certificate.
What hospital asset tracking costs over five years
Hardware is only part of the cost. Software, installation, integration and batteries add up over the life of the system, and most vendors do not publish list prices, so build the model from quotes and weigh it against rentals avoided, purchases deferred and staff time returned to care.
On the benefit side, the American Hospital Association reports that total hospital spending on supplies rose 9.9% through 2025, and that hospitals spent over $10 billion on surgical and medical instruments. Utilization data lets you rightsize the fleet, which informs rental and capital expenditure decisions.
How to evaluate and pilot an RTLS vendor
Evaluate RTLS vendors with a pilot in your own units, scored against criteria you set before the vendor arrives. The questions that separate vendors are accuracy in your rooms, two-way CMMS integration, which system holds the master record, reference hospitals like yours, tag battery life and five-year total cost of ownership.
Run the pilot on one med-surg unit and one procedural area, with nursing, clinical engineering and IT agreeing on the success measures up front. Our guide to choosing an RTLS partner goes deeper on contract and support questions, and the RTLS versus RFID trade-offs matter if a vendor proposes passive tags. Once the pilot proves out, how RTLS asset tracking works across a hospital is the next conversation for your clinical engineering team.
