Ohio Hospital to Install Real-Time Locating System

Ohio Hospital to Install Real-Time Locating System Covering 5 Million Square Feet

Ekahau's system will enable the Ohio State University Medical Center to track assets, patients, employees and temperatures throughout its 40 buildings.

January 13, 2009

RFID Journal - The Ohio State University Medical Center will begin installing one of the United States' largest health-care real-time locating system (RTLS) deployments this month, using its existing Cisco Wi-Fi infrastructure and Ekahau Wi-Fi tags to locate assets and individuals.

The system, which will cover more than 5 million square feet comprising approximately 40 buildings, will take about three weeks to install, according to Tuomo Rutanen, Ekahau's VP of business development.

Once installed, Rutanen says, the system will initially consist of around 1,000 asset tags, but within the next two years, a total of 15,000 Wi-Fi RFID tags are expected to be deployed, to identify and track assets, patients and staff members.

The hospital will employ Ekahau Positioning Engine location software on its own server to pinpoint each tag's location within the facility, and to conduct business analytics based on that location information...