Essen University Hospital and the seven North Rhine-Westphalian clinics of Sana Kliniken AG are Germany's pioneers in the use of Bluetooth in hospitals. Hospital beds and aids are localized in real time in the hospital rooms and data from medical devices is read out. This means that necessary medical equipment can be found immediately anywhere in the hospital if required.The first results are already available after just two months of use.
Over the past 12 months, Bluetooth receivers have been installed in all rooms at Essen University Hospital and seven Sana clinics in collaboration with the young Berlin-based company simplinic . Beds, medical devices and aids have been equipped with transmitters known as beacons. Like GPS, Bluetooth is a basic technology that enables countless applications. Many medical device manufacturers equip their devices with Bluetooth, and many suppliers want to provide hospital customers with "just in time" Bluetooth data.
Thanks to this technology, hospital staff can locate all beds and devices in real time at any time, making the tiresome search for a heavy-duty bed, ECG or wheelchair, for example, a thing of the past. Important device or sensor data can also be read out via the network in future. For example, tests are currently underway to continuously monitor the temperature in all medication refrigerators without manual checks or to read out the remaining fill level of oxygen cylinders by the supplier.
The benefits for the clinic and the reduction in workload for staff have already been demonstrated after just a few months. After the analysis by the simplinic software, one clinic decided against the planned purchase of additional heavy-duty beds, which it felt were always in short supply. Because all nursing staff can now see at a click in which room a free heavy-duty bed is available, the planned investment funds of around €80,000 could be used elsewhere. The automated navigation of cleaning staff for room and bed cleaning after a patient has been discharged also saves 30 to 40 percent of time in all hospitals. This means that beds for newly admitted patients are available on the ward more quickly.
"We are only at the beginning of using Bluetooth for medical patient care, but we can already see the great potential to significantly improve patient care. As part of the Smart Hospital, the Bluetooth network is a logical addition to our wide range of activities aimed at treating our patients optimally through digitalization and the use of innovative technology, while at the same time noticeably reducing the workload of our staff," says Thorsten Kaatze, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board of Essen University Hospital.
"Sana has been working with innovative start-ups and young companies for a long time to advance the topic of digitalization in hospitals - also because there is still a lot of catching up to do in the hospital sector and Sana sees itself as a pioneer here," said Thomas Lemke, CEO of Sana Kliniken AG. "The implementation of technology from simplinic offers our hospitals the opportunity to accelerate important processes in terms of patient care and internal process management using the latest technology."
"Hospitals are demanding when it comes to digital innovations. We ourselves are surprised at how clear the benefits are in all our hospitals. The cleaning service is guided through the hospitals as required by app. This speeds up bed cleaning by between 20 and 40 percent everywhere and noticeably reduces the workload on the ward - because new patients are usually already waiting for a bed," emphasizes Steffen Geyer, CEO of simplinic.
"Bluetooth has long been standard in many industries. The special structural characteristics of a hospital, i.e. many rooms, lots of concrete or water pipes, do not make it easy to use Bluetooth signals reliably for localization. We have three years of intensive development work behind us. Now all we need are sockets and WIFI to ensure that our receivers can locate devices with room accuracy," says Steffen Geyer, founder of simplinic, on the technical challenges.
