Contact information
Address
Ekahau
Hiilikatu 3
Helsinki
FIN-00180
Telephone: +44 7835 411 841
Email: sales@ekahau.com
Website: www.ekahau.com
Press Releases
Guang’anmen Hospital (GAMH) in China Improves Medical Waste Disposal Control with Ekahau RTLS System
2011_07-28_GAMH Hospital Safety.pdf 85.90 kB
The Westküstenklinikum Heide Hospital Deploys Ekahau’s Wi-Fi Badges for Staff Safety and Tags for Asset Tracking
06-14-11-wkk-heide.pdf 157.21 kB
Ekahau Embeds RTLS in Nordic ID RFID Readers to Add Location Tracking to Passive RFID Tags and Barcode
ekahau nordic id press release_23_06_11.pdf 145.15 kB
Ekahau Introduces New Wi-Fi Capacity Tools to Plan Networks for Multiplying Tablets and Smartphones
032911_ESS_55_capacity_and_dbx_ pro_press_release.pdf 44.20 kB
Case Studies
Case Study: RTLS For Staff Safety
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at The University Hospital of Innsbruck in Austria
The University Hospital of Innsbruck in Austria, which is managed by TILAK (Tiroler Landeskrankenanstalten Ges.m.b.H) was seeking a way to deploy an emergency alert system to protect more than 200 individuals working throughout two seven-story buildings that make up its Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. The hospital recently deployed the ProAct® emergency call system that was developed by systems integrator ITH icoserve using real-time location tracking solutions from Ekahau Inc.
The Challenges
There are people of all ages with psychiatric illnesses, who are often prone to unpredictable and aggressive behavior. Ensuring the safety of other patients and hospital staff has become more difficult in recent years as legislation has required the elimination or reduction of physical restraints used on mentally ill patients. In addition, even as the size of the patient population continues to increase, hospitals are often forced to reduce staff because of budgetary concerns.
These factors have combined to result in potentially dangerous situations for staff and patients alike in the University Hospital’s psychiatry and psychotherapy wards. Specifically, when a patient tries to escape or becomes violent and attacks another patient or staff member, there is often not enough time to call for help by conventional means, such as a telephone or a paging system. Additionally, with the University Hospital’s facility that spans 90,000 square meters in two, seven story buildings, a broadcast alert system wasn’t effective in summoning personnel nearby, who could respond to the incident quickly, or assuring the staff member involved in the incident that their alarm had been heard and help was on the way.
The Solution
TILAK selected the ProAct multi-application software platform from ITH icoserve, which has integrated the Ekahau RTLS software and hardware into the solution. Key to the selection of this platform was that Ekahau’s technology enabled it to deliver location tracking over the hospital’s existing Cisco WLAN. This eliminated the need to install a proprietary network with readers or chokepoints , which would have resulted in a time-consuming construction project disrupting the daily care within the hospital. In addition, the Ekahau solution included a site survey software for verifying the performance of the hospital’s network to support real-time location tracking. Ekahau also provided purpose-built T301BD Wi-Fi pager tags that are worn as badges by staff, which provide an easy way to locate staff and deliver messages to the staff.
How it Works
When the hospital was preparing to launch the ProAct emergency call system, the Ekahau Site Survey reported that renovation work in the hospital had caused some of the existing WLAN access points to become inoperable or only work partially. With the site survey results, ITH icoserve was able to fix the network and optimize it for room-level accuracy.
The Ekahau RTLS software was used to define several zones on each floor of the hospital, so that employees located in the same or nearby zones would be summoned first if an incident occurs.
Once the system was set up, staff members were given their Wi-Fi badges, which can be clipped to a staff member’s uniform or worn on a lanyard. The badges are equipped with a pull switch, audible alarm and text display. Staff can easily trigger an alarm simply by pulling down on the badge and engaging the alarm switch. An alarm also could be transmitted if a patient were to take the badge from a caregiver’s uniform. To alert other staff members of an emergency situation, the badge emits an audible notification and transmits the emergency zone information the text display of other staff member badges.
“Psychiatric units can be dangerous for hospital staff, as patients are sometimes violent and unpredictable. So, when an attack or an escape attempt occurs, there is often not enough time to call for help by conventional means, such as the telephone,” said Franz Gruber, chief nurse of the Psychiatric Clinic at University Hospital Innsbruck. “The ProAct solution using Ekahau RTLS technology enables us to trigger an alarm with the simple push of a button on a staff badge, or even faster by just pulling the tag’s lanyard, and quickly and simply convey information about where assistance is needed so those employees who are closest to the incident can respond.”
The Results
The ProAct system with Ekahau real-time location capabilities was first used only by night shift employees, when fewer staff members are present. Because the solution was very positively received by employees, who praised the ease of use, simplicity and reliability of its operation, the hospital is expanding it for use during the day shift. The hospital is also considering other ProAct applications that can be supported by Ekahau’s real-time location tracking technology.
“Ekahau RTLS was a perfect foundation for our ProAct system because it not only supports our initial staff safety application, but it provides us with the flexibility to add other applications in the future that require real-time location tracking – such as asset management, workflow improvements and temperature monitoring,” said Andreas Gereke, head of Innovation and Research Solutions at ITH icoserve.
CaseStudy_Innsbruck.pdf 1.08 MB
Case Study: Real-Time Asset Tracking Speeds Hospital’s Search For Mobile Devices
For Carolinas Healthcare, Ekahau’s Wi-Fi-based RTLS is a Basic Business Requirement for Effectively Managing Its Assets
Knowing the whereabouts of sensitive equipment is a necessity in the healthcare industry because devices are constantly in need of maintenance, cleaning and recalibration to assure that patients are well served. Carolinas Healthcare System (CHS), for example, may need to locate any one of its more than 3,000 pumps and other mobile devices on any given day.
However, their team, which used to spend a lot of time looking in closets and hallways to fi nd their mobile assets, has gained some high-tech assistance. In a matter of seconds, the Ekahau Real Time Location System (RTLS) can identify the precise location of all tagged pieces of equipment. It can even locate items that are behind locked doors or inside another facility 20 miles away.
Large System Gains Control with Versatile Wi-Fi Technology
With 25 locations – from small community hospitals to large integrated educational facilities – serving 5,000 licensed beds, Charlotte, N.C.-based CHS is the largest non-profi t system serving North and South Carolina and the third largest in the nation. Having operations spread across two states presented challenges to ensuring that many of the expensive mobile devices could be found when needed and kept in stock in the appropriate areas. Devices often stay with patients in transit between facilities, adding to the diffi culty of tracking.
The Search for a Loss Prevention Solution began exploring various location tracking solutions, focusing primarily on RFID technology that could leverage their widely available Wi-Fi networks that being used for other applications, such as VoIP telephony and mobile computing. After a competitive evaluation, CHS selected Ekahau RTLS.
“While others were unclear about their strategic direction for the future, Ekahau had a visionary perspective of what the location tracking market was going to be. They had a clear concept of who they are and where they were going with their technology,” said Clay Fisher, CHS’s senior director of Information Services. “One of the primary reasons we chose Ekahau was for its accuracy, as well as its ease of deployment.”
Unlike other solutions on the market that require deployment of proprietary networks and additional hardware, Ekahau RTLS works over an enterprise-grade, 802.11 standards-based Wi-Fi network. As a pure-play software solution, Ekahau RTLS can enable full visibility of mobile assets or individuals across geographically dispersed campuses from a central location.
“We really aren’t interested in measuring this location technology in terms of return on investment. ROI means you are trying to justify your expenditure,” said Fisher. “We view our RTLS system as a basic business requirement that is needed to effectively manage our organization’s equipment. When you have facilities that are integrated, and larger than 500,000 square feet, you have many challenges doing that in an effective manner.”
The Deployment
During 2006, CHS did a 200-tag pilot of Ekahau RTLS at its flagship facility in Charlotte. Ekahau tags were placed on ventilators and pumps, which traveled with patients from floor to floor. “We were able to track those adeptly and within the range of our targets, which included room-level accuracy in most patient areas. Plus, it appeared as if it would scale across the entire organization quite easily,” Fisher added.
Based on these early results, CHS began a full-scale,organization-wide deployment of 2,000 tags, primarily on intravenous (IV) pumps, in 2007. IV pumps are very expensive and highly mobile devices. “We have a lot of patients that are transferred between facilities, and they travel with their pumps. With Ekahau RTLS, we can ensure that the pumps go back to the originating facility, so each hospital has the appropriate amount of equipment,” noted Fisher.
Ekahau RTLS also enables the IT clinical engineering staff to locate the devices quickly to do preventative maintenance or take them out of service in the event of a recall. The ability to quickly fi nd equipment is important for the hospital to remain in compliance with Joint Commission regulations and easily meet its requests during inspections. Finding specific devices had become one of the bigger challenges across the expansive CHS landscape, as there were instances where the staff spent many man-hours trying to track a single pump when it was due for maintenance.
In addition to IV pumps, Ekahau RTLS is being used by the cardiac catheter lab to track balloon pumps and by the nursing staff to locate their non-invasive vital signs carts. By mid-2008, CHS was tracking mobile assets at five facilities totaling three million square feet and had deployed in excess of 3,400 tags across the enterprise.
The Results
Ekahau RTLS has proven to work exactly as promised in their first one-hour presentation, according to Fisher. On average, tagged items can be located within 10feet or better, which is the level of granularity CHS expected for asset tracking.
Before implementing a tracking solution, CHS couldn’t easily account for the location of more than 10 percent of its mobile equipment, requiring the hospitals to rent additional devices to maintain the proper balance across its facilities. “Prior to starting the asset tracking initiative, we had ‘lost track’ of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment,” said Fisher. “Since implementing Ekahau RTLS, we have saved about $200,000 in equipment rental fees.”
The Future
With the Ekahau RTLS asset tracking solution solidly deployed, Fisher said he expects to add more tags to the system over time as it expands to other CHS campuses. In the future, Fisher envisions using Ekahau RTLS to track VoIP handsets used by CHS staff. By incorporating location tracking capabilities with the voice handsets, the hospital can ensure nurses are meeting the expectations of hourly rounds. It also can work in tandem with the nurse call system currently in use to document that patient requests have been satisfied. Additionally, the location-enabled VoIP handsets can assist with staff safety by offering an emergency call button on the phone that can help pinpoint a person’s location when help is needed.
CHS will see more and more benefits as Ekahau RTLS is expanded to other equipment in the future.
Ekahau RTLS Benefits
• Increased use of existing equipment to postpone additional purchases
• Enterprise-wide financial asset accounting and traceability so that the utilization cost can be accrued to the facility using the asset
• Reduced time searching misplaced assets, which saves corporate and distribution center staff time.
• Improved patient flow and safety
• Improved compliance with Joint Commission and Sarbanes-Oxley requirements
Case_CHS.pdf 500.58 kB
Case Study: RTLS for Patient Flow
Apollo Hospital Chennai
Apollo Hospitals Chennai, India’s largest healthcare facility, is utilizing Ekahau Real-Time Location System (RTLS) to help move up to 250 patients a day from department to department as they undergo a series of 26 diagnostic procedures. Ekahau RTLS has been integrated into software from ICEGEIN called “Patient Mantra,” which enables these patients to move seamlessly through these tests without causing orfacing bottlenecks in the process.
The Challenge
Apollo was the first of India’s hospitals to provide an Annual Health Check package that enabled an individual to get all his or her annual healthcare diagnostic tests done in a single day. Rather than undergo each procedure at a separate location and at a different time of the year, a patient can schedule a series of procedures to be held on the same day at one hospital. Once annually, a patient arrives at 7 a.m. and proceeds through as many as 26 procedures, by moving from one department to the next. Procedures vary from patient to patient and include blood tests, x-rays, echocardiograms, sonograms and mammograms.
However, because of the hospital’s size, as well as the large population it serves – there are 3.5 million people living in the city of Chennai alone – the number of patients wishing to be seen can reach up to 250 each day. As a result, managing their flow throughout the many departments was a challenge. When a patient has to go from one department to another in a hospital for their diagnostic tests, it can be a time consuming process because the patient may face a long wait time in one area, while another department has no patients in queue. In addition, when areas are very crowded with patients waiting for treatment, it is difficult for hospital staff to find the right patient or even know how long they have been waiting in a specific area.
The hospital’s scheduling system did not provide an effective way to guide patients to their next procedure. They were given a print out of what procedures they needed, but the information was often rife with errors.
Because of frustration with these long wait times and confusion, patients often left the facility without informing staff, which further complicated the appointment schedules throughout the day.
Apollo Hospitals Chennai was interested in finding a way to minimize delays from moving patients from one point to another, determining the length of a patient’s stay in each place and improving the flow of patients through the hospital by analyzing past performance to make strategic changes and evaluating real-time information to proactively address problems as they occur. By making these changes, the hospital could more efficiently care for patients, improve the patient experience and improve the bottom line.
The Solution:
ICEGEIN’s Patient Mantra with Ekahau RTLS
Apollo Hospitals Chennai was able to address these issues with a scalable patient tracking solution called Patient Mantra, which was developed by ICEGEIN. A key component of Patient Mantra was the Ekahau RTLS real-time location tracking system, which could assist the hospital staff in identifying the location of patients in the health check-up process and determine how long they had been waiting at any given location in order to resolve bottlenecks.
Ekahau RTLS utilizes the hospital’s existing Cisco enterprise-grade Wi-Fi network, combined with specialized tags that patients carry, to determine the location and wait time for each person.
“A patient’s length of stay for these outpatient tests has a direct bearing on our ability to manage capacity in our departments, and ultimately impacts our costs and revenues,” said Dr. Udhaya Balasubramanian, HOD, Department of Preventive Medicine of Apollo Group, parent company of Apollo Hospital Chennai. “Ekahau RTLS deployed by ICEGEIN shows great promise in helping smooth our processes and enable efficient utilization of all hospitals resources, while minimizing the time patients must wait.”
How It Works:
At the time of registration, patients are given an Ekahau Wi-Fi tag that has a unique identification number. As soon as the patient enters the test room, the technician will press the tag’s blue button to signify the test is starting, and when the test is complete, he or she will press the tag’s red button to show that the process has ended. ICEGEIN’s “Patient Mantra” will know the location of the patient and update the system about the test’s completion and what test is scheduled next. Digital screens installed in each department, display every patient’s name and instructions where he or she should go next.
Whenever the patient moves in or out of a particular department’s zone, the Wi-Fi tag he or she is carrying will communicate with the hospital’s Wi-Fi network. The real time location of the patient is automatically captured in the database without any manual supervision. At any point, an administrator can get the status of a particular patient and the zone in which he or she is presently located. The concentration level of each zone is also reported. If a patient moves out of the marked zone or leaves the hospital with the tag, an alert message will be sent to the security at the gates and also to the systems in charge via SMS, e-mail and other preferred methods of communication. At the end of each day, the Patient Mantra system generates reports that help administrators improve patient flow and alleviate bottleneck areas.
The Results:
The ICEGEIN Patient Mantra system with Ekahau RTLS has enabled the hospital to improve the flow of patients through the health check-up process, and to save each patient hours of time that previously may have been spent waiting for a procedure. The deployment is expected to not only shorten the time patients spend at the hospital, but also to allow the facility to serve more patients each day, due to the added efficiency.
Case_Apollo_hospital_chennai.pdf 608.78 kB
Products
Ekahau Mobile Survey
Ekahau Mobile Survey is a powerful Android application for Wi-Fi network administrators, combining the power of enterprise-grade Wi-Fi tools with the convenience and ease of use of a mobile phone app.
Analyze and Troubleshoot
Want to know how your Wi-Fi network is performing, end-to-end? Just open Ekahau Mobile Survey on your mobile phone or tablet. You’ll get comprehensive analysis on Wi-Fi coverage and connectivity details – in super-easy, graphical form.
See your Infrastructure On A Map
Ekahau Mobile Survey displays your network infrastructure layout and its current condition, overlaid on a graphical map*. Even the largest sites with multiple floors and even buildings become easily manageable, with your personal mobile device. You'll pinpoint AP locations and configurations, and see their current statuses!
Monitor Transparently
As you mind your daily business and walk in the facility, Ekahau Mobile Survey monitors the network continually by performing active and passive tests. The user is only interrupted with warnings if the network fails to meet the requirements for the service of your choice. The services include voice over Wi-Fi, location tracking, basic data, and more. Mobile Survey also provides alarms about nearby rogue (non-friendly) access points.
Get Things Done More Easily
Ekahau Mobile Survey is the first enterprise-grade Wi-Fi app to provide:
- Super-easy touch-screen user interface
- Desktop Widget: Monitoring directly from the phone / tablet desktop
- Fully automated background monitoring: only disturb user when network fails
- Wide variety of supported devices
Datasheet_Ekahau_Mobile_Survey_A4.pdf 953.46 kB
Ekahau Site Survey
Wi-Fi Planning, Site Survey, and Troubleshooting Tool: Optimize Your 802.11n for Voice, Video, Data, and RTLSEkahau Site Survey (ESS) is a simple to use software tool for professional Wi-Fi (WLAN) network planning, site surveys, and administration. ESS gives users a ground-level view of coverage and performance, enabling them to quickly and easily create, improve and troubleshoot Wi-Fi networks. It is used by thousands of IT administrators, wireless service providers, and network infrastructure vendors.
Datasheet_ekahau_site_survey_A4.pdf 455.28 kB
Ekahau Wi-Fi based Real Time Location System
Ekahau real time location system (RTLS) is the only Wi-Fi-based location tracking solution that can operate over any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network while offering sub room-, room-, floor- and building-level accuracy. As a Wi-Fi standards-based software solution, Ekahau RTLS requires no readers, new cabling, choke-points or exciters.
The system uses patented software-based algorithms to compute the location of tracked objects and can easily scale to support tens of thousands of tags on a single server. With Ekahau, your RTLS solution can be up and running in a matter of days or a few weeks, not months.
rtls_overview_img.jpg 173.38 kB
Ekahau T301BD Wi-Fi Pager
The Ekahau T301BD Wi-Fi Pager is a locating device that enables users to receive and send text messages. These messages can be based on event rules, statuses, location or other business rules set within the Ekahau RTLS system. Third-party applications can send and receive messages to and from the pager using the open Ekahau APIs. Users can create menu structures on the T301BD, enabling simple text-based browsing applications to be extended to the pager itself. The pager offers an integrated staff duress or panic switch as well. The T301BD is a rechargeable tag that eliminates the need to stock and change batteries.
IMG_9517.JPG 1.46 MB
Ekahau T301W Wearable Tag
The Ekahau T301W is the industry’s first Wi-Fi-based wearable tag. It is designed to be worn by patients, employees, children and other individuals, and it enables real-time visibility into a person’s exact location – enterprise-wide, with reliable room- and sub-room level accuracy. The T301W is designed to be worn comfortably on a person’s wrist or ankle using commonly available wristbands that can be attached through slots on both sides of the unit. The tag is waterproof allowing it to be thoroughly sanitized after use, and enables individuals to comfortably bathe or shower while wearing it. The tag includes a two-color LED, vibration alarm for alerting the person wearing it and it also has a customizable call button for sending emergency or status messages.
t310wsin.jpg 51.58 kB
Ekahau T301A Asset Tag
The Ekahau T301A is small Wi-Fi tag, which offers long battery life and has an intelligent motion sensor and software trigger that sends the location data based one or a combination of three criteria: timed intervals, when the tag is moving or when it has moved to a new position. This functionality allows customers to set the optimal configuration for the application while extending battery life. The tag operates over any standard 802.11B/G/N network, even multi-vendor environments. The T301A has the longest battery life of any Wi-Fi-based asset tag on the market.
IMG_9459.JPG 1.63 MB
