AeroScout Augments Patient Flow Solution to Help Healthcare Customers Improve Quality of Care and Patient Throughput

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - February 23, 2010 - AeroScout, the leading provider of Unified Asset Visibility for the healthcare industry, today announced that it has extended the capabilities of its Patient Flow solution with the addition of new products and application enhancements designed to meet healthcare organizations' increased focus on improving patient care and throughput, staff productivity and resource utilization. As part of today's announcement, AeroScout has introduced the industry's first Wi-Fi RFID Tag with embedded ultrasound technology, provided by Sonitor Technologies, in a small form-factor that is ideal for tracking patients and staff with perfect room-level reliability. The company also introduced the industry's first battery-powered Exciter and several Patient Flow application enhancements.

"Real-time visibility is critical for improving patient workflow and understanding the location and status of resources, patients, caregivers and rooms," said Gabi Daniely, Vice President of Marketing and Product Strategy at AeroScout. "Improving patient flow and throughput are high priority objectives for every healthcare organization. Thus, the new products and capabilities we've introduced enable hospitals to better optimize processes and increase patient flow visibility."

A key requirement of a patient flow solution is to provide flawless room-level location information about patients, staff and equipment. Furthermore, the solution should be enterprise wide and provide a comprehensive set of capabilities. With AeroScout's robust Unified Asset Visibility solution, hospital organizations can work with a single, proven provider and implement one platform for all current and future asset, patient and staff visibility needs, including:

  • Enterprise-wide asset and people tracking
  • Room-level location
  • Bay-level (sub-room) resolution
  • Chokepoint detection
  • Condition monitoring - both temperature and humidity
  • Indoor and outdoor tracking
  • Passive RFID applications
  • Integration to mobile equipment and hospital information systems

New Small Form-Factor Tag for Tracking People The new AeroScout T2s Wristband Tag is battery powered and can be worn by patients or staff, or attached to small medical devices. This is the only Wi-Fi Wristband Tag on the market to include an embedded ultrasound receiver, and it enables people and devices to be accurately located in real-time in hospital rooms. The tag can be used for chokepoint detection (e.g., a wandering trauma patient leaving the ward unattended), room- and bay-level location (e.g., in operating rooms or emergency department bays) or indoor and outdoor tracking. The tag has a replaceable battery that does not require recharging and provides up to four years of battery life. The new tag is water-proof, which means it can be sterilized and also worn by patients while showering or bathing. In addition, the tag has a call button that can be used by staff in duress situations or by patients requiring assistance.

Battery-Powered Ultrasound Exciters Enable Efficient Deployment AeroScout's Wi-Fi Ultrasound solution is designed for asset, patient and staff tracking in healthcare environments. It combines Wi-Fi RFID for hospital-wide visibility with ultrasound for room-level location, providing low total cost of ownership and easy implementation. With no wiring required for installation, AeroScout's battery-powered Ultrasound Exciters deliver unrivaled flexibility, cost savings and deployment time.

In addition, AeroScout now integrates Sonitor's ultrasound technology into its solutions, bringing the leading ultrasound and Wi-Fi RFID technologies together into AeroScout's comprehensive healthcare solutions. AeroScout's market-leading T2 Tag, the newly announced T2s Tag and the Ultrasound Exciter all incorporate Sonitor's ultrasound capabilities.

"We are delighted that market-leading RTLS provider AeroScout has chosen Sonitor's patented ultrasound capabilities to enhance its healthcare visibility solutions," said Dick Tabbutt, Executive Chairman of Sonitor Technologies, Inc. "Adding our ultrasound technology to AeroScout's products provides a robust and cost-effective platform that delivers on the workflow improvement goals that healthcare provider organizations are demanding."

New MobileView Release Includes Patient Flow Enhancements AeroScout is also releasing an updated version of its MobileView software with a range of enhancements and features to support its Patient Flow solution. AeroScout MobileView software has an intuitive user interface that provides:

  • Floor maps and list views of specific departments or entire facilities
  • Real-time and historical location of patients, staff and assets
  • Status of rooms based on color codes (such as available, occupied, requires house-keeping, etc.)
  • Alert indications about events (e.g., patient entering a restricted area)
  • User friendly search tool for simple or sophisticated queries

MobileView offers a wide variety of easily configured automated alerts, such as calls for housekeeping to clean rooms or to notify staff when patients move between departments. In addition, MobileView features a set of customizable and standard reports that enable hospitals to analyze and optimize patient flow. Importantly, AeroScout MobileView acts as both an end-user application and a visibility platform, with a sophisticated modular design and an open API for seamless integration to a variety of hospital applications, such as Surgery Management and Emergency Department Information Systems.

Along with the newly announced products, AeroScout's Patient Flow solution delivers a variety of significant benefits to hospitals. It enables enhanced staff efficiency and productivity through reduced manual processes and improved visibility of patients, equipment and rooms. Revenues are increased and costs are reduced through improved utilization of existing resources, capacity and equipment. Furthermore, it enhances the overall quality of care and improves both patient and staff satisfaction.

AeroScout is the Wi-Fi RFID market leader and the only Wi-Fi visibility solution provider endorsed by the American Hospital Association (AHA). AeroScout will be showcasing its healthcare solutions in booth #8055 at the HIMSS 2010 conference held in Atlanta, Georgia on March 1 - 3, 2010.