In the event of an earthquake or train derailment that results in mass casualties, hospitals are confronted with simultaneously treating hundreds of patients with varying degrees of injuries. To meet the challenge of managing patients, checking the availability of doctors and locating open beds and medical equipment in wide-scale emergency, Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital in Japan has tested and successfully deployed the Real Time Location System (RTLS) from Ekahau Inc.

The Ekahau RTLS is a mission-critical location tracking solution that easily integrates with Wi-Fi networks that are already in use in many large public and private facilities, such as Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital.

"The ability to incorporate a location-tracking solution on top of existing Wi-Fi networks provides hospitals and other facilities with a cost-effective way to prepare for natural or man-made disasters and mitigate the chaos associated with these events. The Ekahau RTLS gives hospital staff the real-time information they need to ensure quality care and ultimately save lives," said Jarmo Ikonen, Ekahau's director of sales, EMEA/APAC. "Hospitals represent just one target segment for such a location-aware emergency management system. Enterprises and public agencies, such as those tasked with homeland security, also can benefit from this technology."

Ekahau and IBS Japan Co. Ltd., an Ekahau-certified value added reseller and systems integrator in Japan, installed the Ekahau RTLS with T201 Wi-Fi tags at Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital to support its emergency management operations.

During a recent disaster simulation drill, Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital put Wi-Fi tags on each hospital staff member, so they could be dispatched quickly by finding their location on a central computer monitor. Each casualty in the triage area also was given a tag, so doctors could find the correct patient and maintain real-time treatment information in hospital databases that had been integrated with the Ekahau RTLS. Once the exercise was complete, Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital reported that with the T201 Wi-Fi tags and the Ekahau Positioning Engine, it was able to locate patients and staff with an accuracy of three to five meters.

"When disasters strike, it is vital that hospitals quickly find irreplaceable medical staff and patients needing urgent treatments," said Shigehiro Mochizuki, president of IBS Japan. "The success of this simulation using Ekahau's location tracking system in conjunction with the hospital's existing patient databases will allow the hospital to vastly improve patient and staff tracking, which is lacking in the most of the systems presently available."

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