Calif. Hospital Gets RFID Asset-Tracking System

El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif will deploy radio frequency identification technology (RFID) in March, according to a joint announcement made by Eclipse Corp. and PanGo Networks on Thurs.

The application complements El Camino Hospital's existing Wi-Fi infrastructure. It will use active RFID, which requires a battery inside the tag to generate a continuous signal, to track equipment throughout the 395-bed hospital. A wireless networking team from Eclipsys, a software and services company, will lead the implementation.

PanGo's location management application for hospitals includes an application for asset monitoring and reporting, Wi-Fi, active RFID tags, and a location management platform that integrates location data into third-party and custom healthcare and business applications.

The hospital's biomedical engineering department also can quickly locate specific equipment for routine equipment maintenance, supporting compliance with stringent Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) regulations.

The RFID application will enable hospitals to track hundreds of mobile biomedical assets, from wheelchairs to IV pumps, to telemetry equipment to identify available resources and rout them to where they're needed most.Eclipsys will re-sell, deploy and support PanGo's asset-tracking application.