The World’s largest RTLS Healthcare Deployment?

Happy new year!

Ekahau just announced a huge RTLS deployment in Ohio: 5 million square feet, and 15,000+ tags to help OSU find stuff and people.

The savings will come from finding assets more quickly, providing better care to patients, improving staff and patient safety, optimizing processes, pretty much everything you can imagine possible with RTLS. Ekahau Positioning Engine location server, and all varieties of Ekahau Wi-Fi tags are used.

I don’t remember hearing of a healthcare deployment that would cover a larger area, or have more tags.

OSU – who carefully tested various Wi-Fi RTLS players before deciding –  is one of the most networked healthcare facilities in the US. They have an extensive Wi-Fi network.  Thus, it was a no-brainer to deploy a Wi-Fi based RTLS instead of installing a separate RTLS infrastructure.  Imagine someone installing readers / sensors and cabling around 5 million square feet…

Location accuracy was another key factor here for the choice: All Wi-Fi RTLS are not the same.

The point: The RTLS market doesn’t seem to suffer from the economic downturn: We’re seeing more and more deployments, which are getting bigger and bigger.

Cheers,
Jussi Kiviniemi
Ekahau