Louisville hospital built around RFID
Norton Health Care opened the doors to its newest hospital at Brownsboro Crossing in Louisville, featuring a fully integrated RFID tracking system designed to remotely monitor a patient’s location and medical status, track and inventory equipment and report the temperature of medicines and blood samples in the hospital refrigerators.
“This entire hospital was designed from the ground up to be wireless,” said Terry Hays of Norton Health Care. “Between the hand held reporting devices our staff carries, and the RFID chips in all our equipment, we can see where our employees, medicines, patients and equipment are at all times.”
The system, developed by Louisville-based Radiant Networks, also features the following: hand held access to the hospital’s pharmacy inventory system, a separate Wi-Fi system for patients and their families, an alarm system that sounds when unauthorized equipment leaves the campus and the ability to transfer chart updates to Norton’s downtown facilities, to help with billing and patient transfers.
According to Steve Miller, VP of sales for Radiant Networks, it’s only a matter of time before most hospitals follow suit.