BLE Patient Monitoring: IoT Solutions for Hospital Safety & Tracking

In large-scale hospitals, the precise and real-time monitoring of inpatients shows great challenges for medical staff. Traditional methods like manual checks, could be inefficient and error-prone especially when nurses need to manage many patients at the same time. There is where IoT solutions step in and offer innovative methods to manage these patients effectively.

Challenge

In an Indian hospital, the director of inpatient department was struggled with managing the increasing hospitalized patients. With limited medical staff, keeping track of the exact locations of every patient would be quite difficult especially within multi-layered large hospital. The high-risk groups, particularly children or those with cognitive impairments, are prone to getting lost within the vast and complex layout. Once losing the way, they may face difficulties in finding their way back or to the correct treatment areas, while medical staff need to take lots of time searching them. This will not only disrupt the regular work, but also will lead to the potential healthcare quality to other patients.

The absence of real-time monitoring shows as an essential obstacle to efficient patient management. Without accurate and instant information of locations of patients, it would be impossible for medical staff to respond promptly to any emergencies. There is an urgent need for a highly efficient and transparent system to monitor these hospitalized patients.

Solution

To monitor these patients effectively, a wireless BLE-based solution has been adopted. Every hospitalized patient is provided a pre-named medical bracelet. These single-use bracelets are uniquely identified and also linked with information system of the hospital. As patients walk within the hospital, nearby gateways, strategically installed at the vital entrances of the hospital and departments, could collect the Bluetooth signals emitted from their bracelets. In this way, staff could get an overall view of current locations of these patients on the online platform, a centralized center receiving data transfer from gateways. Also, director could set up a specific virtual geofencing for patients. Once relevant gateways detect they go out of the geofence, like the inpatient building, the system will inform staff immediately.

In addition to monitoring locations, the hospital has also equipped medical personnel with Bluetooth wristbands. Working similar with bracelets worn by patients, these wristbands could be detected by gateways as well. Having both locations of medical staff and patients, the whole system is able to recognize the distance among them. When a patient faces an abnormal situation, like staying in one place for a long time, the system could identify the nearest medical personnel based on their current locations. An instant notification could be sent to the relevant staff member, alert them to help nearby patient. This ensures assistance is provided promptly, largely reducing response times. Such system will not only show the accurate locations of patients in real time, but also shorten the response time in emergencies, thereby improving overall patient safety.

Featured products

W6 is a Bluetooth wristband designed to offer personnel monitoring, access control and indoor location-based services. When facing emergencies, uses could press the button to trigger SOS button for instant help.

W7 medical bracelet is a single-use and cost-effective device specially designed for medical applications. W7 offers a comfortable wearing experience with its soft TPU materials. It is available in various versions, adult, pediatric, and infant versions.

MKGW1 is a multi-wireless indoor IoT Gateway integrating BLE and Wi-Fi. It features Bluetooth 5 support including long range Coded PHY and high speed 2M PHY. Acting as a BLE-WiFi bridge, the MKGW1-BW Pro gateway captures data from various BLE devices, and then forwards it to cloud servers over Wi-Fi or Ethernet.