WakeMed Cary Hospital and RadarFind Partner to Advance Asset and Patient Tracking Technology

WakeMed Health & Hospitals, a leading health care system in North Carolina’s Triangle region, today announced a partnership with RadarFind, a health care technology company offering a unique, patented Real Time Location System (RTLS) that uses a platform technology for tracking medical equipment and patients.

WakeMed Cary Hospital will be implementing the RadarFind system while also serving as a development partner and research facility for RadarFind engineers to further advance the company’s industry leading technology platform. The partnership is in keeping with WakeMed Health & Hospital’s vision of providing both high quality patient care and health care technological leadership.

“WakeMed is committed to fostering technology which will continue to raise the standard of excellence for health care both within our system and beyond. Initially, RadarFind will implement its medical equipment tracking technology at WakeMed Cary Hospital. We expect this implementation to positively impact patient care by enabling staff to locate needed equipment expeditiously. We are also pleased to be serving as a research environment for continued enhancements to this tracking system. Our hospital installation will play a key role in testing and improving asset and patient tracking in hospitals across the nation,” said Denton Arledge, Vice President and CIO of WakeMed.

In addition to the technological focus of the partnership, WakeMed will be using the RadarFind RTLS to track their inventory of medical equipment, enhance patient care by efficiently locating medical equipment, reduce costs on equipment purchases and maintenance, and develop best practices for infection control.

The indoor tracking system determines the location of mobile medical equipment throughout the hospital and displays this information via the hospital staff’s computer screens, enabling nurses to spend time caring for patients instead of searching the hospital for equipment such as IV pumps, wheelchairs and stretchers.

RadarFind’s unique asset tag features an intrinsically safe sliding switch that hospital staffs use to mark a piece of medical equipment’s status as available, in-use or needs cleaning/sterilization. The tags themselves include a color-coded bar, giving staff a visual cue on each tagged device to quickly determine that equipment is disinfected and available for patient use. RadarFind is the only RTLS to provide valuable, accurate information about a device’s status and location history, serving as a powerful tool for hospital surveillance and infection control.

Industry Specific Design Continues to Evolve

The RadarFind RTLS was developed by hospital administrators and doctors after extensive research involving visits and discussions with hospitals across the U.S. Recognizing that hospitals are a delicate balance of many internal systems, RadarFind is installed in entire hospitals rather than one floor or one section.

The partnership with WakeMed Cary, located near the new RadarFind headquarters in Morrisville, N.C., will provide an ideal setting for RadarFind engineers to develop product enhancements including new metrics and software reporting tools generated from the system.

“We continue to focus on developing a product that enables all of the systems within a hospital to work synergistically. Our work with WakeMed gives us visibility into how we can better serve the day to day needs of hospitals with a solution that offers hospitals ease of use, pinpoint accuracy, and affordability,” said RadarFind Chief Executive Officer Terry Kane, M.D. “The marriage of RadarFind’s expertise with WakeMed’s commitment to innovative technology will continue to raise hospital operations to a new level of excellence and result in premium care for patients.”

RadarFind’s innovative platform technology overcomes the limitations associated with typical RFID and WiFi location tracking solutions. Designed to seamlessly integrate with existing hospital infrastructure and operations, RadarFind requires no new wiring in patient areas associated with adding WiFi access points. RadarFind also operates in a different frequency band than WiFi, so unlike many other systems it can function independently of a hospital’s critical IT network.

Asset tags are affixed to equipment and communicate with readers that plug into existing hospital-grade electrical outlets, with the outlets still available for other electrical devices. These plug-in readers also avoid interference with hospital operations and staff processes since there is no need to close off patient rooms during the system’s installation. Moreover, the intuitive software is simple to use and easily accommodates all hospital staff skill levels.

About RadarFind Corporation

RadarFind Corporation, a health care technology company, offers a unique, patented Real Time Location System. Specifically designed for hospitals by health care professionals, the RadarFind RTLS system seamlessly integrates with existing hospital infrastructure and operations, while functioning independently of a hospital’s critical WiFi network. RadarFind is headquartered in the greater Raleigh-Durham, N.C. area. For more information please call (919) 228-2100 or visit www.radarfind.com.

About WakeMed Health & Hospitals

WakeMed Health & Hospitals, one of the first hospital systems in the country, is a private, not-for-profit health care organization based in Raleigh, N.C. WakeMed’s team of 7,000 nurses, technologists and medical support staff and more than 1,000 affiliated physicians serve the residents of North Carolina using the most advanced technologies and facilities to ensure the finest in health care. For more information, visit www.wakemed.org.