AZ Sint-Maarten localizes medical assets with passive RFID

The AZ Sint-Maarten hospital in Mechelen was looking for a system to localise its more than 15.000 high-quality medical materials in real time and then send the data to the ERP system. Aucxis suggested to implement the standard RFID Item Identification & Tracking solution. 

By using passive UHF technology, the RFID-installation is limited to mobile RFID equipment which is integrated in the existing logistic trolleys. Furthermore,the cost of RFID label tags is only a fraction of the price of active tags, so there is no limit to the number of goods to be localised. 

Project flow

To realise this traceability project, we selected select the most suitable UHF RFID tag for each type of material (metal, textile etc.). These tags also had to meet the requirements of a medical environment. Next, we integrated mobile RFID readers and antennas in some trolleys for logistic use (lending and drinks logistics).  

When following the existing routes, these trolleys pass daily along +/- 90% of the tagged assets: the staff do not have to perform extra tasks to identify the materials. In order to cover the remaining 10%, we also equipped one of the hospital’s transport steps with these hardware.  

All (6.500) door leaves in the hospital are equipped with RFID tags; scanning is simply done from the central aisle on each floor. The ERP system which processes the detections knows – up to room level – where which materials have been scanned.  

Finally, our POLARIS Asset Management software serves as an RFID management platform which collects and manages the data of the trolleys and exports it to the ERP package.  

Result

The fast, efficient tracking of the medical devices makes it much easier to correctly plan the periodic maintenance and/or the replacement of high-quality materials. Furthermore, the investments costs go down because the materials cannot be lost anymore.  

In short, a cost-effective tracing solution using passive RFID which fits perfectly in a hospital environment, making optimum use of the existing logistic processes.