Introduction

Real-time location tracking of medical materials and machines is often a necessity, and not just a convenience for a hospital. For example, teams at Jan Yperman Hospital in Ypres, Belgium, use location-tracking data to inform purchasing decisions, define maintenance policies, and create more efficient logistics flows.

‍

Introducing a Simpler Way to Asset Tracking

A hospital uses thousands of mobile assets and devices: from beds and mattresses to wheelchairs, pain pumps, cardiac monitoring machines, and other medical equipment.

‍

Managing and monitoring all these items is a major challenge, but it’s necessary. Location tracking is an important variable. If staff members don’t immediately know where to find an available medical device, they lose valuable time.

‍

Classic solutions for real-time location services (RTLS) work on Wi-Fi and are unaffordable for a hospital with thousands of assets to monitor. The pricing of tracking tags is high, and the battery lifespan is short. Blyott offers an alternative, using sensors that work with Wi-Fi access points.

‍

Blyott sensors are cheaper, and the batteries last much longer. As a result, Blyott’s approach is up to 10 times more affordable than a traditional RTLS solution, and what’s more, a BLE solution is also quicker to implement.

‍

Dutch Pioneer in Real-Time Location Tracking

Jan Yperman Hospital in Ypres pioneered RTLS more than ten years ago. The hospital’s thinking was simple: monitor wheelchairs via RTLS instead of having an employee waste time looking for one all over the hospital.

‍

Over the years, the hospital has extended the use of location-based tracking from assets and devices to now also include detecting wandering patients and cases of aggression.

‍

Jan Yperman first worked with RTLS using Wi-Fi tags, but this turned out to be a pretty labor-intensive process. Every two years, the tags (the hospital had over 1,000 in use) needed a new battery, each taking 10 minutes to install.

‍

Blyott suggested their sensors as an alternative. “Blyottt sensors are cheaper,” says Norman Cleenewerck, responsible for biotechnology at Jan Yperman. “However, we had one requirement; we didn’t want to compromise accuracy.”

‍

Before collaborating with Blyott, the hospital had upgraded its Wi-Fi network to include 8 BLE receivers per access point to pick up BLE signals from the sensors. Ultimately, this upgrade provides a more accurate picture than localization via Wi-Fi tags.

‍

Meet the Blyott Standard Sensor BT-T1
‍

The BT-T1 is a BLE V5.0 compliant module with secure, custom firmware and a waterproof, easy-to-clean casing.

The BT-T1 helps you keep track of your (mobile) assets and is designed to fulfill all requirements for:

• Asset tracking and logistics
• Item management
• Predictive maintenance use cases

‍

More Insights with Big Location Data and SAS

After a successful proof of concept with Blyott, Jan Yperman decided to switch to Blyott sensors, marking the start of a new trajectory.

‍

The hospital realizes additional value from analyzing the data with SAS DNA Lab. It involves converting the data into useful information about the availability of materials and machines, but also about the intensity of their use.

‍

SAS provides a software suite for advanced, predictive analytics and data management to transform asset localization data into intelligence, and make smarter decisions.

‍

Without that insight, a hospital often buys more material than it needs—just to be on the safe side. Now, it can optimize purchasing and maintenance, as well as the logistic flows of the materials.