The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania installs Radianse indoor positioning solution across PeriOperative Services.

Active-RFID system helps to get the right equipment in the right place at the right time

Philadelphia, Pa., January 11, 2005 – The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP), the flagship hospital of PENN Medicine, has installed a Radianse indoor positioning solution (IPS) to help staff prepare for procedures by providing the real-time location of necessary medical equipment, devices and accessories. The use of a Radianse IPS is expected to save time and increase clinician satisfaction and productivity while reducing asset shrinkage and the need for excess rentals or repurchases.

HUP chose a combination of room and zone-level location precision across four buildings. Users querying the Radianse web-based software can see if a particular item is in one of 31 operating rooms, any equipment storage room — or pre- and post-operative care areas and adjoining spaces, all defined as "zones" by the Radianse system.

A practical way to exactly equip care areas
With a Radianse IPS, HUP’s clinical teams are able to find the specific resources necessary for each procedure. Hundreds of items — from surgical tables and accessories to specialized infusion pumps and monitors — are being tracked using active-RFID with location technology from Radianse. The ability to pinpoint where low inventory items are located is particularly valuable.

“When only two or three of a certain device are available and there are many different places they might have been used most recently, a lot of time is spent searching, and that’s not the best use of anyone’s time, particularly a nurse or other clinician who should be focused on direct patient care,” said Jim Mullen, M.D., associate executive director of HUP and corporate director of PeriOperative Services for the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS).

“While it isn’t practical to have one of everything for every operating suite, Radianse has made it practical to use indoor positioning to more easily find what we need,” added Mullen. “The system was easy to install, connecting to our existing hospital LAN; the search capability is similar to an Internet search engine so it’s very easy to use; and we had the flexibility to choose the precision levels we wanted.”

Michael Dempsey, chief executive and technology officer of Radianse, said, "The situation at HUP is very much what we had in mind when we developed a healthcare-focused IPS. A hospital that can always find the equipment it already owns won’t need to repurchase or rent excess equipment, saving money that can be more effectively invested elsewhere. These savings also mean that a Radianse IPS delivers a fast return-on-investment.

“Once installed, a Radianse IPS can be used to locate any manufacturer’s device at any time, which is the only way to make a real impact on the asset shrinkage that’s costing healthcare millions annually.”

About PENN Medicine
PENN Medicine is a $2.7 billion enterprise dedicated to the related missions of medical education, biomedical research, and high-quality patient care. PENN Medicine consists of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine (founded in 1765 as the nation’s first medical school) and the University of Pennsylvania Health System (created in 1993 as the nation’s first integrated academic health system).

Penn’s School of Medicine is ranked #3 in the nation for receipt of NIH research funds; and ranked #4 in the nation in U.S. News & World Report’s most recent ranking of top research-oriented medical schools. Supporting 1,400 fulltime faculty and 700 students, the School of Medicine is recognized worldwide for its superior education and training of the next generation of physician-scientists and leaders of academic medicine.

Penn Health System is comprised of the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, consistently rated one of the nation’s “Honor Roll” hospitals by U.S. News & World Report; Pennsylvania Hospital, the nation's first hospital; Presbyterian Medical Center; a faculty practice plan; a primary-care provider network; two multi-specialty satellite facilities; and home health care and hospice.

About Radianse, Inc.
Radianse, Inc., Lawrence, MA, provides indoor positioning solutions (IPS) to track medical equipment, patients and staff, combining active-RFID with a patent-pending location algorithm to deliver the proven accuracy and return on investment hospitals require. Radianse adheres to an open systems approach to location solutions, shunning exclusive arrangements it sees as limiting effectiveness across a healthcare campus. Hospitals in the U.S. and Europe use Radianse solutions to reduce asset shrinkage and excess rentals and improve staff efficiency, resource utilization and overall safety, patient flow and workflow. The Radianse Ready™ partner certification program provides training, support and warranties to ensure consistently high performance of Radianse location software, active-RFID-tags and LAN- or WiFi-ready receivers.

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