June 30, 2015 – Conducting equipment inventory is a costly, distracting, ongoing challenge for healthcare providers. Swiftsure’s partner Verephi now makes it simple and affordable to perform 24×7 automatic, accurate, timely inventory verification using its RFID-based workstation solution. Verephi unveiled its system at the recent AAMI expo, where it gained fans among the record crowd of 2,032 healthcare technology professionals.

Workstations become automatic inventory takers

Inventory the automatic way

Healthcare workers use stationary and mobile workstations all the time. Verephi retrofits them with RFID technology, turning them into inventory taking machines that automatically collect high-quality data for input into CMMS. IT departments don’t have to do a thing. Clinicians don’t have to lift a finger. They don’t even have to give it a thought as the solution works invisibly in the background. So it doesn’t require any time, effort, distraction, disruption in care or disturbance to patients.

Workstations with Verephi’s solution have RFID readers that collect and temporarily store information about critical or high-value equipment. Data is buffered locally in a storage device on workstations and uploaded either wirelessly or by a periodic connection to the network, depending on service providers’ requirements and procedures.

More accurate than barcode, more affordable than RTLS

Verephi launches inventory solution at AAMI

Verephi’s solution uses low cost, passive, standards-based RFID tags on equipment that retrofitted diagnostic carts and workstations can read to collect and record information, in patients’ rooms and in hallways. Verephi also offers new carts, workstations and stationary portals that collect inventory data and alert personnel to such issues as improper device disposal and maintenance history and requirements.

Many healthcare providers have tried barcode technology to capture equipment information. But barcode requires line of sight, leaving gaps as labels are overlooked, and is prone to human error. It requires staff time, often relying on clinicians who have much more crucial tasks than taking inventory.

Healthcare organizations have also found that RTLS technology is expensive and complex to implement. It consumes IT resources and needs network support as well as IT department buy-in, particularly when RTLS systems incorporate backend data management applications that overlap or necessitate replacing existing CMMS. It uses expensive active RFID tags that themselves have to be monitored for battery life and replacement, with lapses causing data collection failure.

Simple, low-cost, high-quality data collection

Verephi’s passive RFID solution provides inventory updates without requiring any significant infrastructure build-out or modification. It avoids issues endemic to often elusive, headache-inducing interoperability. Verephi’s system also provides information such as cleaning and calibration dates, cleaning methods used and upcoming maintenance dates of critical and high-value equipment. It reports the data to clinical engineering and verifies it for CMMS.

Verephi’s low-cost system collects high-quality data

Equipment inventory verification – not an elective procedure

Timely, accurate inventory verification is required for financial, operational, safety and regulatory compliance. The process is a daunting challenge for healthcare providers, especially since so many assets are mobile and their locations not predictable. They often transmit and store electronic protected health information (ePHI) that must be secured. Verephi’s RFID-based workstation system is the low cost, simple solution for high quality, accurate, timely equipment inventory verification.

For more information please visit Verephi.