Mary Schilder, director of information services consulting for WakeMed Health Hospitals in Raleigh, NC, has worked extensively with Real Time Location Systems (RTLS), including the RadarFind system, and recommends several best practices for efficient implementation. Her recommendations include:

• Align strategy with business objectives: Clinical engineers and hospital executives should work together to ensure that their strategy aligns with the hospital’s business objectives.

• Tag assets and equipment first, patients second: By tagging assets first, hospital staff can learn the system and see how it will impact workflow.

• Prioritize which assets to tag first: It is best to consider a range of factors including the number of assets and cost per item, asset category nomenclature, rental agreements, and frequency of use of a particular piece of equipment.

New updates to the RadarFind RadarView modular software suite used at WakeMed include a streamlined user interface, a robust rules-based engine, and the capability to indicate when equipment is temporarily out of service for repairs.

The system also features increased system resolution to room location accuracy and the capacity to track up to 65,000 tagged assets or patients.