What is a Healthcare Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS)?

Real-Time Location Systems (RTLS) in healthcare are used to provide immediate or real-time tracking and management of mobile medical equipment within hospitals and healthcare settings. These systems enable hospitals to optimize their operations, increase efficiency, and reap cost savings.

What kind of different RTLS Technologies are available to hospitals?

Asset Management RTLS Staff Duress RTLS Hand Hygiene RTLS Temperature Monitoring RTLS Patient Monitoring RTLS Infant Protection RTLS Clinical Workflow Automation RTLS Nurse Call Automation RTLS

What are the benefits of Hospital RTLS for asset management?

Reduce Equipment Loss Complete PM Cycles With Ease Automate Clean Equipment Distribution Make Data-backed Procurement Decisions Increase Utilization of Existing Equipment Ensure equipment is available for clinical staff

What is the difference between RTLS and RFID?

RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) and RTLS (Real-Time Location System) are related technologies with distinct purposes. RFID is primarily focused on identification and tracking through radio-frequency signals, providing static data when a tag is within the read range of a reader. In contrast, RTLS combines various technologies, including RFID, to deliver continuous, real-time location information with high accuracy. While RFID is suitable for applications like inventory management, RTLS excels in scenarios requiring dynamic tracking, such as real-time asset monitoring in manufacturing or precise patient tracking in healthcare.

What is the History of RTLS in Hospitals?

Early Days (RTLS 1.0 – Early 2000s): RTLS technology emerged. These systems used simple tags but complex and expensive infrastructure, making installations labor-intensive and disruptive. Transition Period (RTLS 1.5 – Early 2010s): BLE technology became mainstream, but cost and accuracy issues persisted, limiting practicality of these solutions. The Next Generation (RTLS 2.0 – Late 2010s): Cognosos introduced an innovative solution with battery-operated tags and beacons, leveraging cloud technology and machine learning for precise, cost-effective, and efficient real-time tracking, marking a significant advancement in RTLS.

The Cognosos RTLS involves four components: Beacons, installed infrequently in the ceiling throughout the hospital, ping out signals to a tag A tag receives a signal, then passes data to an internet-enabled gateway The gateway, installed in an existing hospital IT closet, sends data to the cloud LocationAI, Cognosos’ cloud-based platform, uses a machine learning algorithm to compare the information it receives with its reference network, pinpointing the tag with room-level accuracy.

How accurate is RTLS?

The accuracy of RTLS can vary, and it’s measured along two axes: margin of error and confidence. The margin of error indicates how close the system’s location measurements are to the actual position of the asset, and most companies often emphasize this aspect in their marketing. However, confidence is equally—if not more—important.

What Areas Can RTLS Solutions Cover?

Your RTLS should seamlessly extend its coverage to meet the unique demands of every area within your hospital. Cognosos RTLS excels in monitoring vital spaces like clean utility, soiled utility, surgery, pre-op, medication rooms, hallways, stairs, bays, garbage rooms, emergency, nurse stations, admissions, and post-ops, ensuring comprehensive real-time visibility of assets.

What is the difference between indoor & outdoor RTLS?

Cognosos provides distinct solutions for tracking assets, with outdoor solutions tailored for large outdoor areas, lots, and yards, while indoor asset intelligence is designed for improving asset tracking and management within complex indoor facilities like hospitals. The technology, installation, and application of business rules differ between the two solutions to suit their respective environments.

Which Type of RTLS is right for my hospital?

Selecting the right type of RTLS for your hospital depends on your specific needs and circumstances. To make an informed choice, start by identifying the precise business problems you intend to address with the RTLS. If your goal is to efficiently track mobile medical equipment, locate assets, and analyze usage, consider a system that can differentiate between various areas within the hospital. Carefully assess installation and start-up costs, keeping in mind that legacy technologies can be costly and may entail room closures during installation. Factor in the total cost of ownership, considering maintenance and battery replacement expenses. Additionally, evaluate the actionability of the data produced by the system, as an inaccurate or limited system may not support sound decision-making.

How much does it cost to implement a hospital RTLS?

The cost of implementing an RTLS can vary based on factors such as your healthcare facility’s needs, chosen RTLS solution, and deployment scale. An often overlooked factor is the “cost of entry,” which is the initial expense to set up your asset tracking system. Opting for a high-cost entry vendor may delay your ROI.

How long does it take to implement RTLS in an average hospital?

Cognosos offers an eight- to 10-week installation and training process for their RTLS system, divided into five phases: Phase one involves hardware installation, which does not require entry into patient-care areas. Phase two focuses on both AI training for spatial data collection and tagging of equipment. Phase three includes system optimization and training for key personnel. Phase four entails final testing and a system walk-through with the RTLS steering committee. Phase five is when the Cognosos RTLS system goes live after all preparations and training, ensuring a smooth and efficient implementation process.

How do I achieve an ROI with RTLS?

To attain a Return on Investment (ROI) with a RTLS for your hospital, focus on three pivotal areas: first, RTLS can prevent unnecessary equipment purchases by offering precise data on equipment utilization, saving the hospital considerable expenses. Second, it reduces equipment loss, stemming from misplacement or patients taking items, through monitoring and alerts. This minimizes loss and the need for costly replacements. Lastly, RTLS optimizes the management of rental equipment, enhancing visibility and ensuring efficient usage of owned assets, which in turn reduces the reliance on rentals.

The healthcare RTLS platform that delivers operational capacity and clinical resilience

Cognosos is the unified RTLS platform that improves clinical capacity and total campus resilience by automating logistics, validating care workflows, and taking command of staff safety.

Real-time visibility & data-driven optimization

Asset

Ensure clean equipment is where it’s needed when it’s needed.

Safety

Reduce workplace violence with campus-wide duress coverage and incident response management.

Environment

Automate refrigerator & freezer temperature monitoring.

Hygiene

Automate the manual hand hygiene observation process to ensure compliance.

Your success is our mission

Customer stories

We are dedicated to ensuring that our customers achieve their goals and realize the full, on-going value of real-time visibility. Discover how businesses like yours have achieved success with our AI-powered location intelligence.

“The yearly loss of equipment we encountered in the five years prior to Cognosos implementation, has been dramatically reduced by 92%, which translates into an ROI that we could only dream of.”

Asset Tracking & Management

It’s not about finding lost equipment, it’s about making sure equipment is always available. . Hospitals purchase too much equipment when poor visibility of equipment distribution leads to equipment shortages and low utilization.

Fix the underlying problems to ensure you are getting the most out of the equipment that you already own and drive significant savings.

Eliminate equipment delays impacting clinical care

Ensure clean equipment is where you need it, when you need it – don’t let lack of equipment impact start times and procedural throughput.

Reduce unnecessary equipment purchases

Use historical insights to make data-backed mobile medical equipment procurement decisions ensuring you only buy what you need, saving you money.

Reduce mobile medical equipment loss

Automated alerts let you know when equipment moves into restricted zones to enable users to prevent loss such as laundry, trash, accidental theft, or transfers.

Staff Safety & Duress

Cognosos’ staff duress solution directly addresses the escalating problem of healthcare workplace violence by providing your clinical teams with immediate, location-aware protection everywhere on campus.

By proving your commitment to safety, you can substantially reduce nurse turnover and anxiety, allowing your staff to focus entirely on delivering optimal patient care.

Campus-wide coverage indoors & outdoors

One of the only RTLS platforms to provide safety both inside and outside, offering complete campus-wide coverage.

Stay on top of unfolding incidents

Receive continuous location updates as the event unfolds to ensure help is arriving where the staff member is, not where they were.

Discreet button placement to avoid escalation

Your staff can easily find and press the duress button without taking their eyes off of the potential threat. A silent buzz is felt when the button is pressed to confirm that an alert was sent, and help is on the way.

Environment & Temperature Monitoring

Environment monitoring that alerts you in real time and keeps maintains logs automatically. Your medications and samples stay protected while your staff stops doing manual rounds.

Reduce spoilage & infection risk

Save money by reducing loss and decreasing infection risk with instant notifications when critical assets fall outside preset temperature and humidity ranges.

Minimize staff burden

Eliminate staff time spent performing manual temperature checks, freeing up personnel for patient care.

Compliance Automation

Track refrigerator and freezer temperatures around the clock with instant alerts when storage conditions drift out of range. Generate compliance reports for The Joint Commission, DNV, CDC, and Vaccine for Children (VFC) audits in minutes instead of hours.

Hospital hand hygiene compliance

Drive higher hand hygiene compliance with our advanced electronic monitoring systems. Gain a clear view of compliance data at the facility, department and individual levels to identify trends and areas of improvement. Create a safer work environment and lower the chances of HAIs.

Reduce healthcare associated infections (HAIs)

Capture precise data on every entry and exit of patient spaces and track overall, staff group, role-based, individual, departmental, and shift-based adherence.

Enhance patient experience & staff productivity

Track every hand hygiene event automatically and identify missed opportunities to improve compliance and reduce HAIs.

Promote regulatory compliance

Gain a clear view of compliance data at the facility, department and individual levels to identify trends and areas of improvement.

Modern software and hardware stack purpose built for the outcomes you care about

Our hardware and software are built specifically for the complex environment of hospitals and the unique challenges of the healthcare business

Smarter install, less disruption

Our AI-powered location technology delivers high performance with an ultralight infrastructure, speeding installs, and dramatically reducing the hardware, implementation, and maintenance expense.

Smarter accuracy, better decisions

AI-refined location delivers true room-level precision—enabling faster response times, better workflow improvements, and more confident clinical and operational decisions.

Smarter modular architecture provides flexibility

Our modern, cloud-based platform enables faster deployments, easier management, and lower cost. Our full-stack SaaS service includes built-in analytics and interoperability among other enterprise applications.

Cognosos for Hospitals

Hospital RTLS

Cognosos utilizes the power of AI/ML to transform tracking data into operational intelligence, redefining the value of location solutions. Cognosos is able to quickly deploy with an ultra-lightweight footprint that excels in complex environments, producing a hard-dollar ROI within months through a subscription based service model. We stand by our fast deployment, high performing solution and gladly participate in proof-of-concept exercises, where other vendors fear to tread.

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Healthcare Solution FAQs

How do we know if equipment is actually being cleaned between patients?

Most healthcare facilities depend on visual inspections and staff self-reports for infection control but these methods create holes in their processes. The cleaning process of equipment remains unverifiable because there is no way to track its completion and no method exists to detect recurring instances of staff members skipping essential procedures.

Healthcare asset management with workflow tracking enables staff to monitor equipment entry into soiled storage areas and track both storage duration and return times to clean storage areas.

Why are staff still reluctant to use panic buttons during incidents?

The fixed panic button system creates three main operational problems when it gets deployed. The buttons stay out of reach for staff members when they need them most. The activation of visible panic buttons triggers aggressors to escalate because it reveals their situation to them. The system shows only the first location of incidents but does not display the actual location of people who are moving.

Staff safety solutions with wearable badges provide employees access to discreet buttons which they can use throughout their entire campus. Security systems track staff members’ complete movements throughout buildings and outdoor spaces at all times.

How do we improve hand hygiene compliance without observers following staff around?

The practice of manual observation proves expensive because it generates untrustworthy results because staff members change their actions after they become aware of being monitored. The system shows high hand hygiene compliance during observation times but it does not monitor hand hygiene continuously throughout all operational shifts and departments.

Automated hand-hygiene compliance monitoring provides real-time, invisible oversight to understand true behavior during normal activities.

What happens when medication fridges fail overnight and nobody notices until morning?

By the time staff discover the problem during morning checks, you’ve potentially lost thousands of dollars in spoiled medications, vaccines, or blood products. Manual temperature logs don’t catch failures in real time.

Temperature monitoring systems send immediate alerts the moment conditions go out of range. Your team can intervene before inventory is compromised, and you have continuous compliance documentation.