Real-time indoor positioning systems are built around 3 components:
● Independent “TAGs” in different forms (key card, wristband, button,…) which can be clipped on equipment, patients and health workers.
● Light and independent infrastructure distributed around the building, including
independent beacons regularly emitting signals used by mobile equipment to calculate
their positions, antennas, connected markers/terminals which receive signals emitted by
tags
Location data analysis and management platforms can update in real time via a user interface the position of equipment, a staff member or a patient on the interactive map. It enables flow, waiting time or equipment availability analysis.
For example, positioning systems in an outpatient department can be implemented easily and quickly. Tags are attached to bracelets around patients’ wrists and on mobile lockers. They transmit signals to beacons on the walls, and then they send back information to the app servers which can calculate the position of patients and objects in real time. Jean-Yves Commeleran, development director at Icade Healthcare Property Investment, summarized nicely their mission in collaboration with Pole Star:
“In the context of digitalization, we don’t only build walls anymore, but we make them talk”.