Radianse announces indoor positioning Alerts to support overall healthcare efficiency and safety

Context-sensitive alerts triggered by interactions among people, things and clinical spaces

Lawrence, MA, February 9, 2005 - A care unit that knows a high-risk patient should not be leaving. A procedure room that knows the wrong patient is in the wrong place. A clinical billing system that knows when a procedure begins and ends. These "smart" clinical spaces and systems are possible with a new Alerts application from Radianse, Inc., an innovator of indoor positioning solutions (IPS) used to locate and associate equipment and people in hospitals.

Radianse will demonstrate the new capability at the 2005 HIMSS Conference and Exhibition, (Booth 6655) Feb 14-17 in Dallas, Texas.

Proven in practice
The potential for indoor positioning alerts was first tested at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in the Operating Room of the Future (ORF). Researchers there proved a Radianse IPS could recognize a time-based association between patient and anesthesiologist in the induction area as the context for "start of anesthesia care." When it makes the association, the Radianse IPS sends a message (alert) to a billing or charting system that the procedure has begun, eliminating manual data entry to improve efficiency and accuracy.

"It's a cornerstone of context-sensitive medicine," said Mike Dempsey, Radianse CEO and chief technology officer. "Radianse Alerts apply accurate information on who, what, when and where. A hospital can apply this location and association information in a number of ways. Automate processes. Measure the flow of patients and procedures. Or to effectively support clinicians and technicians with real-time prompts to help them avert situations that may be harmful to a patient or impact the bottom line."

Julian M. Goldman, M.D., MGH anesthesiologist and Program Leader of the CIMIT MGH OR of the Future Medical Device Interoperability Program, created automated detection of the "start of anesthesia care" event working with Radianse engineers. "We began by testing the notion that accurate, time-stamped location data could be a marker for a specific event," explained Dr. Goldman. "Our success shows that there are many ways we can use solutions like this to streamline and automate our processes."

With the new Alerts application, hospitals will have greater flexibility and control to create intelligent events. An intuitive user interface will walk them through establishing the conditions for sending alerts from a Radianse IPS to other clinical systems or personnel.

"The concept is very powerful," said Warren Sandberg, M.D., PhD, Co-Program Leader, CIMIT MGH OR of the Future Project "We use location and association information in our work to develop a more efficient perioperative process. Alerts are part of that. Also, when you know where people and equipment are, you can anticipate and hopefully prevent bottlenecks - those times when you have three patients who need two available machines."

With ten hospitals and thousands of people and devices covered by a Radianse IPS today, Radianse indoor positioning alerts are improving safety and reducing asset loss. For example:

Patient Wandering - when a high-risk patient wearing a Radianse active-RFID location tag moves outside preset boundaries, the Radianse IPS recognizes this context as "Patient wandering" and alerts clinicians about the patient's location, enabling them to escort the patient to safety.

Wrong patient, wrong room - when a patient wearing a Radianse active-RFID location tag is brought to a procedure room where the clinical team is prepared for another patient's procedure, the Radianse IPS recognizes this context as "Wrong patient, wrong room" and alerts clinicians, improving safety.

Telemetry device out of bounds - when a telemetry transmitter with a Radianse active-RFID location tag attached approaches the laundry room, the Radianse IPS recognizes this context as "Telemetry device out of bounds" and pages personnel to retrieve the device, eliminating asset loss.

Availability
The Radianse Alerts application will be available in the second quarter of 2005.

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. The company was recently named an "Up & Comer" by Healthcare Informatics. 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 efficiency, safety and patient flow. The Radianse Ready™ partner certification program gives device manufacturers and application providers the training, support and warranties to ensure consistently high performance of Radianse location software, active-RFID-tags and LAN-ready receivers.

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