Medical Equipment Tracking with MOKO Beacons and Gateways

Effective management of medical equipment within hospitals is critical to ensure operational efficiency and patient safety. A persistent challenge for these healthcare facilities lies in tracking every medical device in real-time. This task will become impractical when relying solely on manual recording methods, especially in large-scale settings. To address this, adopting an IoT-based solution offers a scalable and efficient approach to overcome such a challenge.

Challenge

A large hospital located in Thailand recently faces a problem related to the medical equipment tracking. This hospital, renowned for its vast scale and comprehensive range of medical services, is equipped with a number of medical devices that are utilized across a wide array of departments. From diagnostic machines to life-saving monitoring tools, these devices play a crucial role in the daily operations of the hospital.

However, the hospital staff frequently find themselves struggling to locate such essential equipment, due to the constant movements of these devices among different rooms. Without a fixed employee responsible for tracking, medical staff need to search for the specific device by asking colleagues for assistance, which require multiple attempts sometimes. This not only leads to inefficiencies in the workflow, but also has the potential to impact patient care negatively, as any delays in locating the right equipment will lead to postponed diagnostic procedures and treatments.

Solution

An IoT hardware solution has been introduced to solve this challenge. This approach involves the attachment of coin-sized tags to each medical device. These powerful tags enable real-time monitoring capabilities that were previously difficult to achieve. Embedded with BLE 5.0 technology, these tags provide highly precise and reliable location information. Whether medical devices are in a large hospital ward, or being transported between different departments, the BLE 5.0 tags can accurately pinpoint their positions, minimizing the time and effort required for device searches.

Once the coin tags collect the real-time location data of the medical devices, such information will be transmitted through our robust gateway. Serving as a crucial intermediary, the gateway acts as a bridge between these devices and the client’s platform. It efficiently processes and forwards the data via Wi-Fi, ensuring the information to reach the platform timely and accurately. With a clear interface displaying the real-time locations of all tagged medical devices, medical staff easily locate various devices with just a few steps on computers. This not only reduces the searching time, but also enhances the efficiency of daily medical operations.

Featured Product

M1 Coin Tag, powered by Bluetooth Low Energy technology, is designed with compact and slim form factor which is ideal for retail and asset management. It has equipped with CR2032 coin cell battery, which can be easily replaced to extend the life cycle. Besides, its lightweight and slim design makes it flexibly stuck to assets/exhibition badges using the dual-side tape, thus providing the location-based data analysis and services.

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.