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IndustryFind the pump. Do not watch the patient.
Two very different requirements in one building: tagged equipment that should be findable, and people who should be safe without being surveilled.
What is actually hard here.
Clinical staff spend a measurable part of every shift looking for equipment. The usual response is to buy more of it, which raises capital cost, service cost and the amount of equipment there is to lose.
The second problem is falls. Cameras answer the question and are unacceptable in the places falls happen — bays, bathrooms, bedsides. Pendants and wearables answer it only when worn, and are frequently not.
What it looks like on site.
The outputs worth having.
- Equipment location — pumps, wheelchairs, ventilators, beds. Searchable, to room level or better.
- Utilisation — how much of the fleet is actually in use, which usually reveals the shortage was distribution rather than quantity.
- Patient and staff flow — where time is spent, and where waiting accumulates.
- Theatre and bay turnaround — measured from occupancy rather than from a form.
- Falls and prolonged immobility — detected by radar, without a wearable.
- Hand-hygiene compliance — dispenser use correlated with presence, at the level of a ward statistic rather than an individual.
Why these, and not the others.
UWB for assets. A tag with a multi-year battery on a pump is unobjectionable and immediately useful.
mmWave for people, and specifically for the places a camera cannot go. The sensor emits reflection points, not pictures — a hard property of the device, not a policy setting. It works in the dark, through bedding, and asks nothing of the patient.
RFID for consumables and for equipment that only needs checking in and out of a store rather than tracking continuously.
A sensible order of work.
- Pick one asset classInfusion pumps or wheelchairs. One class, one department, one number to move.
- Anchors in corridors and storesCorridors give continuity; stores give the answer most searches actually need.
- Radar per bayOne sensor covers a bay. Coverage scales with rooms, so scope it room by room.
- Agree what is recordedEspecially for the people-sensing side. Write down what is stored, for how long, and who can see it, before installing anything.
- Integrate with CMMS and EMRLocation on the asset record; alerts where staff already look.
If it works.
- Time spent searching for equipment drops, and the case for buying more of it gets tested.
- Falls are detected in places that could never have been monitored before.
- Turnaround times become measurements instead of estimates.
Does this look like your site?
Tell us the space, what moves in it, and the decision a position would change. We will tell you which technology fits and what a first deployment would involve.