Indoor Positioning Systems reach "Tipping Point": Reduced cost and complexity expand application potential for healthcare

Healthcare, technology and applications providers gather for Indoor Location Leadership Conference at CIMIT, the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, Cambridge

Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 23, 2003 - As the global positioning System (GPS) is transforming business, industry and everyday life with applications as diverse as in-vehicle navigation, coastal zone management and aircraft noise impact reduction, so may newly advanced indoor positioning systems (IPS) improve the ways healthcare providers plan for, deliver and measure the effectiveness of patient care. This was noted by Nathaniel Sims, M.D., Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), keynote speaker at the first annual Indoor Location Leadership Conference, sponsored by IPS developer Radianse, Inc., formerly Sentinel Wireless, Inc.

Radianse hosted healthcare providers and medical solutions providers at the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT) this week for an interactive discussion on the future of wireless indoor location technologies. CIMIT, where clinicians and technologists converge to improve healthcare, often works with young companies through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.

The Tipping Point

In terms of indoor positioning systems, Dr. Sims said: "The tipping point for explosive growth of non-military GPS applications was when GPS receivers increased in accuracy and decreased in costs. That came after years of defense-funded development, and after an era of specialized civilian uses that were cumbersome and expensive to implement.

"We are now at a similar tipping point with indoor positioning systems. Technological advances have reduced the complexity and cost of these location systems - and the application potential for healthcare is likely to be substantial."

Dr. Sims foresees a host of new applications across patient and staff safety and satisfaction, clinical and biomedical engineering productivity, technology investment, utilization practices, and process-efficiency benchmarking. He expects that using indoor positioning to implement these measurement systems will contribute to rationalization of patient care processes.

"Essential to achieving these objectives will be multi-disciplinary cooperative teaming around IPS new application development, hence this conference," said Dr. Sims.

The Operating Room of the Future

Dr. Sims, an MGH Anesthesiologist and Physician Advisor to Biomedical Engineering at Partners Healthcare Systems, has more than 15 years of experience in developing and deploying devices in the clinical setting. He was instrumental in bringing an early-stage indoor positioning system to the MGH-based Operating Room of the Future (ORF).

The ORF, which opened in August 2002, is a collaboration between the hospital's departments of Surgery, Anesthesia and Nursing, CIMIT and several industry partners. The goal is to bring together innovative, state-of-the-art technologies in a "live" surgical environment, and quantify the effect of these technologies in relation to patient care, cost and efficiency.

Cracking the Code

"The hit or miss approach to implementing location technologies in healthcare is over," said Reed Malleck, Radianse CEO, and one of four experienced healthcare technology managers who founded the original Sentinel Wireless, Inc. in November 2000. "Our focus is to solve the location problem in healthcare - and we've cracked the code, removing the obstacles we have seen firsthand for years: expense, complexity and disruption to the patient care environment.

"A Radianse IPS is a healthcare IPS - affordable, simple and pervasive," said Malleck.

Measuring Workflow

In the ORF, an IPS is being used to objectively measure patient flow-time, wait-time, resource utilization, and their variances, from registration to surgery to recovery.

To collect the data, small, battery-powered transmission tags are worn by patients and surgical staff. The tags, which are also being attached to medical devices for asset tracking and utilization applications, continuously transmit radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR) energy to receivers connected to the hospital's existing network. Web-based location software analyzes and presents the real-time location, and stores data for transfer to any standards-based clinical or hospital information system.

MGH plans to use the positioning data to tackle the compelling challenges of identifying and rectifying system inefficiencies and improving patient care.

About CIMIT

CIMIT is a Center of Excellence for the implementation of advanced technologies in healthcare. A non-profit consortium of world-leading academic and research institutions, it is through CIMIT that teams of clinicians and engineers converge to solve health care challenges. Founded by Partners HealthCare System, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Draper Laboratory, the CIMIT community now encompasses over 350 investigators, 15 institutions, 45 industry partners, and a solid alliance with the Department of Defense working on dual-use technologies for soldiers and civilians.

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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