GE Healthcare And Centrak Introduce Bed-Level Location Technology To Help Healthcare Providers Track Tagged Mobile Medical Equipment

Main Category: Medical Devices / Diagnostics
Article Date: 23 May 2008 - 15:00 PDT

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GE Healthcare, through a collaboration with CenTrak, Inc. of Newton, PA, announced the availability of a new RFID technology capable of dividing a room or segmenting a bay by creating radio frequency identification (RFID) "virtual walls." The technology was developed to meet the needs of healthcare providers to track tagged mobile medical equipment down to portion of a single room. This sub-room-level distinction in certain areas of the hospital provides an important enhancement to RFID room-level accuracy.

The Asset Optimization System gives hospitals the ability to accurately locate assets within a monitored area as small as 6' x 8', which is the size of a typical small patient bay, whether curtained off or wide open. "Our customers tell us that reliable accuracy, along with cost, are the two most important factors in choosing among current RFID systems," said Bret Barczak, general manager of Services & Solutions for GE Healthcare. "Most systems capable of providing higher than room-level accuracy, like ultra wide band, traditionally have been cost prohibitive. The Asset Optimization System allows healthcare providers to create virtual RFID rooms where higher level intelligence, tracking and reporting are more valuable, particularly in places like the OR and ED."

"We were impressed with the technology advancement on two fronts," said Kenneth N. Sable, MD, FACEP, Director, Division of Informatics, Emergency Department, Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY. "The ability to create 'virtual walls' in the often wide open environment of the emergency department, will enable us to quickly and reliably locate both patients as well as life-saving equipment such as cardiac defibrillators and portable ultrasound machines. Additionally, this product is battery powered and requires no additional wiring, making it an extremely low maintenance solution."

"The first RFID system we released provides 100% room-level accuracy," added Ari Naim, CEO of CenTrak, "Today we have advanced the system's accuracy further, to a unique position in the marketplace." The company's vision for RFID technologies is to deliver the highest visibility resolution. "Imagine the ability to see who, what and when, all the way down to the bed-level," Naim says.

The new RFID technology will be demonstrated by GE Healthcare (booth #732) and Centrak (booth #609) at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Conference & Expo, May 31st through June 2nd in San Jose, California.

About Centrak

CenTrak is a leading provider of precise, adaptable, and cost-effective tracking solutions for healthcare, commercial, and industrial facilities. The company develops and markets Active-RFID network products used for tracking people and assets in real time, enabling greater workflow efficiency, asset utilization, and higher overall security. The patented InTouch Care Real Time Location System (RTLS) offers breakthrough performance and cost advantages that had been previously unattainable. It is the first predominantly battery-powered Active RFID network system in the world and it is currently operating in several world-class healthcare sites in the United States. For more information about CenTrak, visit its Web site at: http://www.centrak.com

About GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare provides transformational medical technologies and services that are shaping a new age of patient care. Our expertise in medical imaging and information technologies, medical diagnostics, patient monitoring systems, performance improvement, drug discovery, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies is helping clinicians around the world re-imagine new ways to predict, diagnose, inform, treat and monitor disease, so patients can live their lives to the fullest.

GE Healthcare's broad range of products and services enable healthcare providers to better diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease, neurological diseases and other conditions earlier. Our vision for the future is to enable a new "early health" model of care focused on earlier diagnosis, pre-symptomatic disease detection and disease prevention. Headquartered in the United Kingdom, GE Healthcare is a $17 billion unit of General Electric Company (NYSE: GE). Worldwide, GE Healthcare employs more than 46,000 people committed to serving healthcare professionals and their patients in more than 100 countries.

GE Healthcare