Healthcare is one of the most important components of the society as it includes all people and is the key for healthier generations. Today, almost every country prioritize healthcare sector and make big investments on hospital and equipment innovations. It is widely accepted that technology is the answer to the problems of modern healthcare sector and the investments are made accordingly. New medical devices and appliances are being developed everyday for diagnosis and treatment of patients and modern medicine keeps improving. But certain issues on staff mistakes, patient tracking and equipment loss are still widely unsolved for decades and in need of solutions. It can be seen that traditional technological solutions were not able to propose a satisfying formula and these issues can only be solved through interactive technological solutions.
An interactive technological solution, as the name suggests, enables interactions between various users via its distinctive technology and opens a new door to the information systems.
ID Bracelets for Staff Mistakes
Working in shifts is common among hospitals and this causes hospital staff (doctors, nurses etc.) working long hours with busy patient traffic. These conditions make staff vulnerable to mistakes and these mistakes may have serious consequences because treatments mostly include important medicine, treatment equipment or surgery and can end in disaster if applied on the wrong patient. In order to prevent these mistakes, interactive bracelets can be given to and worn by patients. These bracelets are connected to the bigger interactive system at the hospital and include personal and medical information of patients. Nurses and doctors can scan the code/chip on the bracelet with their small devices before each treatment for confirmation and this way they would not treat the wrong patient with the treatment. This confirmation would be done from changing serum in hospitals rooms to operating rooms.
Smart Rooms for Patient Tracking
Tracking patients’ vital activities, presence inside their rooms, resting hours and other activities is important for patient safety and keeping tabs on patient’s recovery. These activities are tracked via smart sensors inside the hospital rooms and the information is sent to the main system. In case of an emergency, like abnormal vital activities, falling or missing patient, the staff is automatically alarmed by the system.
Smart Signal Transmitters for Missing Equipment and Patients
Many expensive equipment are reported missing or stolen in hospitals everyday. Hospital officials claim that these cost highly to the hospital budget and also cause wasted long hours by staff that look for the equipment throughout the hospital grounds. Ii is hard to determine if an equipment is simply missing inside the hospital or stolen by someone and it may take time to realize the disappearance. With smart transmitters installed on the medical equipment, staff will be alerted if an equipment is taken outside of its usage area (determined by the staff and embedded into the sytem) and that equipment can be tracked. This solution is also applicable to patients, as patients with diseases like Alzheimer’s can go missing frequently or some patients can fall outside of their rooms where no one is around and these people can be found via smart transmitters that will be added to bracelets that patients will wear.
This sums up only a small amount of the current problems of hospitals that can be solved via interactive smart technology. Many issues can be solved with innovative smart equipment and hospitals need to research and find the best solutions for their staff and patients because medical sector is expected to have close to zero error margin.