Monitoring hospital patients

We were contacted by Zebra Technologies who were carrying out a project for a Netherlands hospital whereby it had developed a system that could track patients throughout the hospital, from exiting the ambulance through admissions right through to the operating theatre and was based on their Zatar cloud-based solution. They were looking for a small Bluetooth compatible beacon that could be attached to the patient and so their location past key points could be measured and timed. These key points were generally wall mounted tablets running Zebra Technologies proprietary software.

A key part of the brief was that the Bluetooth compatible beacon be easy to use so as to minimise user error. We settled on a method whereby the beacon would be light sensitive and would ship in a fully sealed bag and when it was extracted would turn on through exposure to light without any additional steps being required by medical staff, who would generally be ambulance staff at that point.

Following that solution, we were asked to provide Bluetooth compatible push button devices that could be used to determine when key procedures had been completed and that would be in different colors so users knew which button to push. Again the Bluetooth compatible message on a button push would be detected by a nearby tablet connected to the Zatar could-based solution which would record and timestamp the event

Our work with Zebra Technologies led to our involvement with Thinear, where a key staff member from Zebra Technologies went to work and was aware of our capabilities. This is an example where we forge long term relationships with people and continue to work with them after the switch companies.