Implementing a Real-Time Location System is no longer a nice-to-have for healthcare facilities. Standard practices present challenges like bottlenecks and delayed care, lost or underutilized medical equipment, and poor communication and safety issues that contribute to nurse burnout and high turnover rates.

The solution for these issues is RTLS. The use of cutting-edge technology in AI and IoT signals allows you to track resources, understand how patients move through the facility receiving care, and keep your staff safe, all in real time. The result is a more responsive system that improves the patient experience and provides a better, more supportive workplace for staff. Make 2024 the year you transform your health system with an effective RTLS provider that optimizes processes, uncovers waste, and maximizes margins.

Understanding RTLS in Healthcare

Real-time location systems use badges or tags attached to targeted assets to track patients, personnel, and resources. These devices transmit real-time location data identifiable by unique IDs via a wireless signal to track an asset with room-level accuracy. All information is accessible through a software system that approved staff members can access through a desktop computer or mobile device. The potential use cases are many, with three main areas of application in healthcare settings.

Asset Management

Tagging medical equipment puts a stop to waste and improves the utilization of assets, from inventory and ordering to wheelchair tracking to bed management. Staff can easily locate essential equipment like IV pumps and share resources amongst departments to prevent hoarding and over-ordering. Trackers also cut down on money wasted on renting equipment the facility already owns.

Staff Workflow

Real-time tracking is an excellent way to empower staff members and make them feel safe. RTLS badges have a button for nurses to press when threatened, which sends out a signal pinpointing their location so help can intervene fast.

RTLS tracks staff movement to provide data necessary to identify congestion and areas of friction so you can make workflows more efficient. Smart badges provide total visibility into nurse movements, saving them the time and effort of inputting this information manually. Real-time monitoring also improves hand hygiene by sending reminders.

The benefits of using RTLS in your healthcare facility include less waste of time and resources, optimized workflows, improved patient satisfaction, increased security, and staff members who feel valued and are more likely to stay in their jobs.

Patient Tracking

RTLS systems tracking prevents patient elopement, abduction, or wandering. Trackers on hospital wristbands provided an added safety measure for the most vulnerable patients, like infants with an increased risk of abduction and those too impaired to make reasoned choices, who may attempt to leave the hospital at the risk of their health. Staff can determine that all patients are where they should be without monitoring them in person 24/7.

It’s also a useful tool to provide indoor navigation directions to patients and family members traveling to different departments throughout the facility. The trackers deliver detailed directions to prevent patients from getting lost, without tying up staff escorting them through the facility.

Criteria for Evaluating RTLS Providers

RTLS for healthcare makes a huge difference in your daily operations, so choosing the right provider is essential to ensure you get the greatest benefits from your investment. The criteria to look for include:

1. 1. A Single Platform for all Use Cases: Transcend operational data silos and make sure you choose a vendor that can enable multiple use-cases from medical device management, staff safety to patient flow to optimize hospital operations along the entire inpatient journey. You may just start with one, but you want to select a future-proof platform to maximize ROI and reduce TCO.
   2. Ease of Use: Choose solutions that are user-friendly, allowing for self-service and designed specifically for healthcare needs and user personas including nurses, security officers and clinical engineers, minimizing the need for extensive training.
   3. Fastest Time to Value: Select a vendor with a proven track record and references of rolling out a solution at speed and scale. 
   4. Delivered as a Service: Choose a vendor that owns the outcomes of the applications provided through an SLA tight to the solution offering – you don’t want to talk about battery lifetime, maintenance workflows or accuracy problems.
   5. Integration Capabilities: Ensure the provider offers integration capabilities with both legacy systems and future roadmap items including Snowflake or ChatGPT for efficient data queries and analysis, facilitating smarter decision-making.
   6. Transparent and Simple Pricing: Seek out vendors with straightforward pricing models, such as a fixed price per bed per use-case delivered in a SaaS agreement, to avoid hidden costs and ensure budget predictability.
   7. Modular Location Accuracy: Opt for vendors offering modular solutions and transparent pricing for both location infrastructure from ward to room level accuracy and use-cases, enabling scalability and flexibility to adapt to changing needs.
   8. IT-Managed With BLE-Enabled Wi-Fi 6 Platforms such as Cisco Spaces: Select a vendor capable of integrating with existing IT systems to reduce TCO and enable an IT-managed RTLS service. 
   9. Scalability: The chosen solution should easily scale with your organization’s growth, capable of expanding in coverage and functionality without significant additional costs or complexity.
   10. Data Security and Compliance: Prioritize vendors that adhere to strict data security standards and are compliant with healthcare regulations (e.g., HIPAA in the U.S.), ensuring patient data is protected.
   11. Proven and Recent Track Record: Consider vendors with a proven track record of successful implementations in healthcare settings with the technology offered at scale in the last two years, evidenced by case studies or testimonials from other healthcare providers in why they have chosen the solution over others.
   12. AI-First: Choose a vendor that helps you transcend your data from a single use-case and helps you uncover hidden waste in operations.

Understanding what makes a great RTLS provider will help you select a provider that offers a fast, streamlined implementation process along with comprehensive staff training and continued support for an excellent ROI.

The Evolving Landscape of Healthcare RTLS in 2024

The technological advancements shaping RTLS solutions make it possible for healthcare facilities to address some serious challenges that make it difficult to deliver quality and affordable care:

• Nurse burnout: Nurses spend significant time each shift searching for essential supplies, performing administrative tasks, and other distractions that take them away from patients’ bedsides and add to their stress.
• Staff turnover and shortages: Increased instances of burnout lead to high turnover rates and nursing shortages that exacerbate the problem and put a heavier burden on the remaining staff. High costs of recruiting and training new staff cut into profit margins.
• Increased concerns about staff safety and duress: Attacks on nurses have skyrocketed in frequency. Feeling unsafe and worried about potential bodily injury is one of the main drivers for nurses leaving the profession.
• High spending on medical equipment due to poor tracking and inventory: Affixing trackers to locate assets as needed cuts down on equipment loss, damage, theft, and misallocation of resources between departments.
• Rising costs of care: Inefficiencies in the healthcare facility contribute to already rising costs of care, making it more difficult to provide high-quality care to patients that they can afford.
• Poor patient outcomes: Overly tired staff, inability to find lifesaving equipment quickly, care delays, and more lead to critical mistakes in delivering care, which results in poorer outcomes for patients.

An advanced RTLS system addresses these challenges with spatial and geolocating tools that pinpoint the location of staff, patients, and equipment down to the exact room. Along with real-time tracking, RTLS systems also provide information on how patients move through the facility. This data is valuable for discovering how long patients spend waiting to see a provider, the length of provider visits, and the average wait times for various medical procedures. Monitoring patients in this way identifies bottlenecks and common delays so the facility can correct these inefficiencies.

Spotlight on the Leading RTLS Provider in 2024

Kontakt.io has served more than 32,000 satisfied customers as a leading SaaS company since its founding in 2013. Kontakt.io’s AI, IoT, and RTLS solutions solve over 20 use cases with a single platform, providing RTLS for healthcare in the following contexts:

• Care operations
• Staff experience
• Staff safety
• Hand hygiene
• Staff journey analytics
• Medical device on-demand
• Patient experience
• Patient elopement
• Indoor navigation
• Patient room display
• Medical equipment management

Customers love the fast time-to-value, easy deployment, and unlimited scalability into additional use cases as your facility grows. Riverside Healthcare deployed Kontakt.io’s RTLS for healthcare to solve issues of tracking patients and devices in its 300-bed facility. Virginia Hospital Center Health System used Kontakt.io’s solutions in combination with Phunware to provide greater convenience and care to all patients through indoor navigation, appointment scheduling, and more.

Comparative Analysis

The obvious advantages of implementing RTLS have created high demand within the healthcare industry. Kontakt.io provides industry-leading RTLS solutions, topping the list of legacy and first generation RTLS providers such as:

• Securitas Healthcare
• CenTrak. Inc.
• AiRISTA Flow, Inc.

The expanding market of RTLS in healthcare and other industries demands cutting-edge solutions using the latest technology to stay ahead of the competition. With the growing need for real-time tracking across multiple sectors, it’s important to choose a provider that specializes in the healthcare industry to get targeted solutions that focus on patient and staff safety and satisfaction, along with asset tracking.

Customers prefer Kontakt.io because it is easy to use, fast to create value, and scalable enterprise-wide. Accelerate your ROI with the number one time-to-value solution capable of deployment within weeks or even days. Kontakt.io’s as-a-service model commits to delivering the outcomes you want and need.

With Kontakt, the pricing model is simple. Choose a 3 to 5-year contract that includes full installment and maintenance. Enjoy one transparent price per bed for the complete service, with flexible options leaving you open to scaling.

The Crucial Role of RTLS In Healthcare

RTLS can transform how healthcare systems deliver care by enhancing efficiency, supporting staff in a safe environment, and elevating patient care. Getting optimal results from your RTLS requires that you choose the right provider. When you select Kontakt.io, you get an as-a-service solution with fast implementation, ease of use, and room for scaling. With an outstanding time to value, Kontakt.io is the company you need to optimize your facility with minimal downtime and superb ROI.