New Maitland Hospital - Mobile staff duress & asset tracking
Context & challenges
New Maitland Hospital is a large, modern healthcare facility designed to natively integrate advanced digital solutions. The hospital spans 60,000 m² across 10 floors and operates 340 beds, making it a complex, multi-level environment where both staff mobility and equipment availability are critical.
The project addresses two primary challenges: ensuring the safety of mobile healthcare staff and enabling precise, real-time localization of medical equipment. In such a large hospital, delays in locating staff during emergencies or searching for essential equipment can directly impact care delivery and response times.
Project scope
The deployment covers the entire hospital and includes:
Full indoor coverage across 10 floors and multiple departments
Critical care areas such as Emergency, Mental Health and IPU, requiring room-level precision
Support for both mobile staff safety and medical equipment tracking within a single location platform
Solution deployed
Pole Star implemented a combined solution addressing two complementary use cases.
For Mobile Staff Duress, healthcare personnel are geolocated via their smartphones. In case of danger, staff can trigger a distress alert directly from the mobile application, allowing security and response teams to instantly identify both the alert and the precise indoor location of the staff member.
For Asset Tracking, medical equipment is equipped with BLE tags, enabling real-time visibility of assets across the hospital. Equipment locations are updated continuously, reducing the time spent searching for critical devices and improving overall asset utilization.
To meet the hospital’s accuracy requirements, room-level precision is achieved in critical zones, with local precision enhancements enabled through Pole Star’s infrastructure components.
Pole Star architecture & solutions
The solution relies on Pole Star’s healthcare-ready location platform:
NAO® Mobile for smartphone-based indoor localization and mobile staff duress
NAO® Track for real-time tracking of BLE-tagged medical equipment
Precision enhancements using Pole Star hardware in critical care areas
This architecture ensures consistent performance across a complex, multi-floor hospital environment.
Operational benefits
The deployment delivers tangible operational and safety benefits:
Improved safety for mobile healthcare staff, including in high-risk areas
Optimized utilization of medical equipment through real-time visibility
Reduced intervention and response times during critical situations
Full coverage of a large, multi-story hospital with a unified location solution
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