Healthcare AioT RFID 1903 x 663 v251

HOSPITAL SMART LINENS TRACKING

Latin America Hospital Maintains Strict Hygiene and Reduces Waste with Garments Tracking

Customer Case: Albert Einstein Hospital

Today, the Client is at the forefront of important projects, which shows how the public-private partnership can yield fruits for the community, inspiring other institutions to join in for the health of Brazil. The Client’s skills and knowledge are at the service not only of patients of its own eight units, but also in more than two dozen locations in Brazil, and around the world.

In the city of São Paulo alone, the Client operates 22 public units – always with the highest quality. 

Key Figures:
Beds: Over 600
Annual Patients: Approximately 2 million
Staff: More than 14,000 employees
Accreditations: First hospital outside the United States to receive Joint Commission International accreditation

The Challenge

Our Client needed better visibility into the location of textile assets, especially as assets moved around the hospital and external laundries. With a large number of items used across multiple rooms and OR, the Client needed a way to maintain and track each item automatically.

Manually processing laundry items is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task that increases laundry operators' operational costs. It is also error-prone, potentially leading to item loss and increased costs for replacing missing items. In addition, handling soiled hospital laundry risks exposing staff to infectious diseases.

Additionally, the hospital staff replaced items they thought they had lost when they were actually in an unexpected part of the hospital, leading to unnecessary expenses.

By implementing a RAIN RFID solution built on the SmartX HUB cloud platform, the customer wanted to increase the visibility of all tagged textile assets throughout the building.

HealthCare Laundry with RFID 1000 x 700 v936
HealthCare Laundry with RFID 1000 x 700 v236

The Solution

The SmartX HUB uniform management system provides a simple solution for eliminating uniform shortages by allowing us to track, sort, wash, and repair garments accurately.

The solution combines high-performance washable and durable RFID laundry tags, along with handheld and Cabinet reader systems to capture item data. 

It enables laundry services to quickly and safely count laundry items, improving efficiency, reducing errors, and lowering costs.

When caregivers check out an item, it is associated with that asset’s unique tag chip. Readers scan each tag chip as the asset moves throughout the facility so Hospital staff can instantly locate the asset.

Asset movements are stored and presented in real-time making it easy to identify items that leave the hospital’s facilities without permission, and preventing possible asset loss.

Key Benefits of SmartXHUB

With the SmartX HUB Platform, hospital laundering processes gain visibility and control over linens and uniforms throughout their lifecycle. Operations staff can easily track the real-time location of each item, virtually eliminating loss and associated replacement costs.

By closely accounting for textile inventory, laundering services can make more precise purchasing decisions and avoid the cost of overstocking to offset shortages.

Annual time savings due to reduced search needs:

Previously, locating items throughout the multiple wings of the hospital took days. Nurses spent an average of 30 minutes per day looking for equipment. With increased inventory accuracy and the real-time location system, items are now located within seconds. Not only are items located faster, but the history of each item is now readily available, creating a safer patient environment.

Decreased overall inventory needs:

Increased visibility and fewer lost assets led to improved asset utilization. With a full picture of all of its items, the hospital realized it had more assets than it needed. With this new picture of its inventory, it was able to decrease overall inventory by identifying two redundant products, saving significant costs.

Making reusable competitive with disposable:

By improving the processes behind isolation gown management, this solution makes sorting linens and tracking the number of uses more straightforward and accurate. This process improvement makes reusable linens a viable option compared to disposable textile assets, helping hospitals save money and reduce waste.

Streamline workflow with increased automation:

RFID technology counts laundry items automatically, increasing the speed and accuracy of inventory accounting. The staff has more time for value-added activities such as running clean and efficient laundry operations and hospital logistics services.

Gain visibility and control to prevent item losses reduce costs:

With the SmartX HUB Platform, hospital laundering processes gain visibility and control over linens and uniforms throughout their lifecycle. Operations staff can easily track the real-time location of each item, virtually eliminating loss and associated replacement costs.

HealthCare Laundry with RFID 1000 x 700 v836

Conclusion

Using the SmartX HUB Textile Track solution, the most important Hospital in Latin America was able to automate gown tracking, easily pull gowns from service at the end of life, and speed up the inspection and packaging processes. Using RFID tags and readers with the SmartX HUB RFID solution, the Hospital now ships an average of 10,000 reusable textile assets per day and tracks 150,000 linens and uniforms in circulation.

Each gown has an RFID tag providing an associated, unique ID number added at the original intake

Once used, each gown is sent out to be cleaned and tracked as they arrive at the Hospital receiving

Gowns are laundered, sorted, and bundled for hospital delivery - tracking each gown as it is moved

Once linen reaches maximum allowable cycles, the linen is destroyed

Linens are tracked at all transition points using +10 RFID readers

For more details on this innovative project and other initiatives, visit our website and stay tuned for more updates on how our customers continues to lead in safety and operational excellence

About us

As specialists in delivering a wide range of innovative IT healthcare solutions across the Globe, we combine creative ideas, knowledge, and smart technology to provide award-winning services that improve patient experience, maximize efficiency, and enhance productivity. We deliver hospital management solutions that improve the running of healthcare organizations; we have an extensive suite of products that put patient welfare at the heart of every process and keep the health service sustainable throughout the 21st century.

Contact us now

More Related Topics

Explore our blog for insightful articles, personal reflections and ideas that inspire action on the topics you care about.

Smart Audit: 40,000 Coolers, 500 Auditors
CaRLOS Asset Management | Customer Cases

Smart Audit: 40,000 Coolers, 500 Auditors

Petrobras: Four Radios in One Badge
CaRLOS Connected Worker | Customer Cases

Petrobras: Four Radios in One Badge

Friato: Cold-Room Exposure Timed by RFID
CaRLOS Asset Tracking | Customer Cases | Manufacturing and Automotive

Friato: Cold-Room Exposure Timed by RFID

Explore more information about cases and news.
Stay informed with the latest updates and in-depth insights.

Learn More