Sterile services tracking
Benefits
Improve the management of surgical instruments with automated tracking
Our sterile services tracking solution provides live data on the availability of endoscopes and surgical trays in storage and operating areas to improve logistics, efficiency and patient safety. By working with solution providers for the management and cleaning of surgical instruments, we are able to provide a full track and trace solution which also offers the option of GS1 compliant tags.
Reusable invasive medical devices (RIMD) are constantly being transported through a cycle of operating rooms, cleaning processes and storage rooms. Therefore, knowing where available items are is crucial to the efficient running of operations. With our RFID tracking solutions, readers can detect their movement from operation rooms, to decontamination and back to storage, providing visibility of the whole flow of equipment. This solution provides the exact status of the equipment, whether it be in use, stored or cleaned and therefore minimizing search time and allowing improved contingency planning for unscheduled operations.
Having visibility of the locations of surgical equipment helps to improve utilization levels to drive down capital costs, whilst the ability to identify individual endoscopes and other items supports incident reporting. It can also help improve the flow of the sterile equipment as issues such as bottlenecks can be detected and fixed.
How does sterile services tracking work?
The system
Readers are fitted to the entrance and exit of the decontamination areas, the autoclave and sterile store rooms, as well as in operating rooms where the equipment is used. Each item to be tracked, for example instrument tray or endoscope, is fitted with a specialist passive RFID tag which can withstand standard sterilization procedures and is suitable for going through an autoclave.
Location data
Signals from these tags are picked up by a reader which sends this location information to the central RFiD Discovery database. This provides increased visibility of where tagged items are at any point in time, to help locate them quickly and reduce the time spent searching for them if, for example, they are currently in use in an operation or have been stored in the wrong location.
Utilization
Having increased visibility of sterile surgical equipment means that the hospital can monitor how often items are being used, how many are available at a certain time and how many spares they have. This supports decision making on required stock levels to cut expenditure for unnecessary just-in-case items whilst ensuring there are always sufficient instruments available to cope with demand.
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White Paper: The role of active and passive RFID as part of an effective medical device management system
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Find out how real-time location information on surgical equipment can improve the utilization, management and auditing of assets
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