The perfect pairing of RF with IR

Since the beginning of maritime traffic the captains and ship navigators have had the need to position their ships on the seas. Sometimes for knowing how far they are from the next harbor or to ensure that their vessels are in safe waters. In the beginning the navigation was done mainly by visible landmarks such as islands, mountains, stars, other planets and the sun. Later other visible navigation where invented such as bonfires and light beacons.

Today navigators use visible navigation aids, such as buoys, beacons and route marks, to navigate the ship safely even in dire straits. These visible navigation aids are simple yet powerful tools for navigators to find the safe route through shallow water and rocks, but they only work when the weather is good. When fog or rain narrow the visibility to a few meters, the visible navigation becomes difficult or impossible.

The invention of radio signaling gave a birth to a new form of signaling in the beginning of the 20^th century. While radio was invented for data transmission, it was soon adapted also for navigation purposes as radio beacons. The radio beacons solved the problem of navigating in bad weather and also increased the detection range from visible beacons. Later other radio technologies such as sonar and satellite navigation have been invented, to make navigation even easier and ubiquitous. However, when the ship arrives to a harbor, the people on the command deck still search for light beacons and route marks to make sure they are on route to the correct dock.

The mixture of tools used for positioning in maritime are remarkably similar to the technologies Ekahau has chosen to use for our RTLS platform. We use radios for giving an accurate, ubiquitous position that is available everywhere within the radio coverage area. Since radio signals penetrate walls and ceilings, we can ‘hear’ the radio signal from several rooms away.

Similarly like ships are guided with light beacons to the correct docking place, we use light beacons to position the last few feet to the correct hospital bed. Light does not penetrate walls or ceilings, so we only see them when we are within the same room. Also, as with maritime navigation, the light beacons can have a narrowed beam to ensure that we don’t see them until we are in the correct position. Maybe the only difference is that we chose to use invisible, infrared light that does not disturb the people doing their daily routines. Thanks for our technology these people also don’t need to worry about positioning as our system knows where they are, if they would get lost.

Arttu Huhtiniemi
VP Product Management
Ekahau

RFID Journal: UK Hospital employees get help in real-time with RTLS

The UK government is planning to require UK mental-health facilities to install RTLS technology. St. Andrew’s Healthcare, the largest Brittish non-profit provider of mental -health services, got proactive on this matter: They installed a Motorola Wi-Fi network and Ekahau RTLS.

Read the full article here: http://www.rfidjournal.com/article/articleview/7948/1/1/

The RTLS system, consisting of Ekahau’s tags, location engine, and Vision application, allows the employees to call for help by pushing a button anywhere in the facility. The credit-card sized T301BD tags are carried by the employees on a lanyard. Once fully deployed, the system will consist of around 3,000 Ekahau tags.

The Motorola Wi-Fi system, covering the entire facility, was a convenient choice, and is a combination of infrastructure and Mesh Wi-Fi. The fact that Ethernet cabling is not required for all access points makes the installation easier, and saves some pounds. The Moto Wi-Fi mesh also provides self-healing functionality: If an AP breaks down, the others will take over.

St. Andrews previously had an emergency response system based purely on infrared, but that wasn’t as reliable. Whereas infrared only works in areas covered by the IR transmitters, Ekahau RTLS works anywhere where you have Wi-Fi coverage – which means the entire facility, and even some of the outdoor areas.

In terms of number of RTLS systems being deployed today, my feeling is employee safety is right up there with asset tracking (tracking high-value assets to find them when needed). It’s just that the asset tracking deployments are typically larger in terms of number of tags tracked. One thing is a fact: the market is right now growing at a phenomenal rate – and at Ekahau are happy to be leading the market.

Cheers,
Jussi Kiviniemi
Sr. Product Manager
Ekahau

Video: How Apollo Hospitals optimize their processes using RTLS

Apollo Hospitals in India has dramatically improved their patient flow by with help of RTLS (Real-Time Location System).

A short summary:

The problem was really capacity management: A large hospital with 250 patients going through many departments every day caused a lot of unnecessary waiting and wandering around, meaning lost dollars (or rupees actually).

The solution is a system called Patient Mantra, delivered by Icegein, and powered by Ekahau’s RTLS tags and location server. The Patient Mantra system is a smart application layer, taking in patient location and status information, as well as a complete understanding of the hospital processes. With that information, the system optimizes patient flow and capacity planning, resulting in tremendous savings. Plus, the patients can spend more time with their families and less in the hospital waiting room.

When checking in to the hospital, the patient is given a credit-card sized Ekahau RTLS tag, worn on a lanyard. The tag is then linked into the patient’s name and healthcare information.  When the patient goes to a certain department, the location information is delivered to the appropriate staff members, letting them know the patient is waiting for certain services. The buttons in the tags are pressed by staff members to indicate, for example, that the patient is now being treated, or has finished the treatment. With this information, important real-time information about wait and treatment times can be analyzed.

If wait or treatment times become overly long, alerts can be given. And if a patient is leaving the facility without completing all the tests, the system can alert the personnel. Of course, patients can also alert the staff should they need urgent assistance.

In addition, thanks to the up-to-date information about the completed processes, the patients can see from the hospital monitors where to go next.

The system also produces useful reports, covering treatment times, wait times, and so forth.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
Jussi Kiviniemi
Sr. Product Manager

Huge RTLS asset tracking deployment at Clarian Health

A couple of weeks ago, Ekahau announced another huge RTLS deployment, this time at Clarian Health in Indiana. The system will consist of 10,000 T301A asset tags in multiple hospitals,  Ekahau RTLS Controller (the location engine), and Ekahau Vision application. The complete press release can be found here: http://www.ekahau.com/news/readallnews/press-releases/222-clarian-health-and-ekahau-partner-for-enterprisewide-real-time-location-solution.html

A while back, I wrote about another huge RTLS deployment (blog entry: http://ekahau.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/the-worlds-largest-rtls-healthcare-deployment/) in Ohio.

Of course, most of the RTLS deployments we at Ekahau do go “under the radar”, so the public will never know of their existence. Last week, for example, we sold a 15,000 tag system to the middle east, but it’s not publicly announced yet. Since we’re typically not installing additional infrastructure with the RTLS deployments, and the system deployment is pretty quick, the factories producing the tags are working overtime! Exciting times.

Anyhow, the Clarian deployment is just another example where a consortium of large healthcare facilities already has a Wi-Fi network, and has a problem with overly large asset inventory and rental costs, and not being able to find assets when needed (on the hospital floor, and for  maintenance). For Clarian, it made perfect sense to deploy Wi-Fi based RTLS.

Clarian is expected to move to other tracking applications as well, including temperature monitoring and patient flow analysis.

Maximizing Staff Safety with Wi-Fi RTLS

It’s a fact that RTLS is providing huge savings for healthcare facilities by enabling quicker finding of hospital assets. Asset tracking has been one of the first RTLS applications where ROI could be easily proven. And that’s probably why asset tracking in hospitals has became the most common application for Wi-Fi RTLS.  Good public examples include the 15,000 tag deployment at OSU Medical Center and Chandler Hospital in Kentucky.

Then there’s been a lot of talk and also some good implementations of RTLS covering all kinds of applications outside of asset tracking. Such apps include finding children on large cruise liners and amusement parks, ensuring personnel safety underground, finding vehicles on huge parking lots, and tracking consumer behavior in retail stores. But these apps are yet to make a real break-through: We have made five or less installations for each application genre, as opposed to deploying asset tracking installations every week.

So, asset tracking in healthcare  still remains the biggest driver for Wi-Fi RTLS. But the clear runner-up application has become staff and patient safety - especially in healthcare but also in other verticals.

Here’s an example scenario of how a Wi-Fi RTLS staff safety application works:

• Employees (nurses, doctors, miners, you name it)  wear credit-card sized Wi-Fi tags. Patients wear wristwatch-sized tags on their wrists.
• When a threatening situation takes place, or a patient is in trouble, the employee or patient can either push a button or use the pull-strap (on employee tags) to activate an alarm
• The alarm information includes the person sending the alarm, as well as the person’s location
• The alarm information is sent to the administrator, nurses, and/or the nearest security guards. The appropriate staff members all carry  Wi-Fi tags that include a displays that shows where the alarm was escalated. Alternatively, the alarm can also be sent as an SMS, a voice message, and the like.
• The staff members know who needs assistance and exactly where, and can rush to assist the person in trouble

Ekahau T301BD (credit-card size with display) and T301W (wristband) tags

To prove my point, here’s a few actual customers taking advantage of RTLS staff safety:

• Royal Ottawa Mental Health Center  in Canada
• Apollo Hospital Gennai in India
• ESSAUDE Hospitals in Portugal
• St Jerome Hospital in Quebec, Canada
• KEH Hospital in Berlin, Germany
• Ditan Hospital in China
• Alexandria Retirement Community in VA, US

In Finland, where I live, nurses and social workers have been injured and even lost their lives because they had no way to sound an alarm. We actually did our first healthcare staff safety deployments in Finland, but now US, Canada, Germany, India, and other regions are catching up.  In regions outside the US, staff safety is typically the first RTLS application installed. In the US, asset tracking typically leads the way, followed by staff safety.

Speaking of RTLS applications in healthcare, wireless temperature monitoring is suddenly becoming huge.  The fourth app I want to mention is healthcare is process flow optimization. But more about these two later.

When describing the staff safety app, someone always brings up the “Big Brother” issue. The simple answer is: the system can be configured so that the employees are only tracked when the alarm has been activated. Maximal privacy, maximal safety.

It’s hard to calculate an ROI for a saved life. But since setting up this type of a system requires no extra infrastructure (assuming the facility already has a Wi-Fi network), it’s not expensive or complicated to improve the safety of your employees and patients.

Sorry for the long post, let me know if you want them shorter in the future.

Cheers,
Jussi

Jussi Kiviniemi
Sr. Product Manager
Ekahau

RTLS for DECT indoor phone systems

Some may question if it’s really RTLS or not when we’re talking about tracking phones. But I’ll call it RTLS nonetheless.

Anyways, Ekahau and NEC (formerly NEC Philips) today announced a partnership that enables accurate, real-time tracking of DECT indoor phones. It’s not just a press release, the integration work is done, system has been tested, and we’ll see announcements of production installations in a couple of months.

Simply put, Ekahau provides the location tracking technology (accurately know where the phones are) and NEC brings the infrastructure (phones, base stations).

This piece of news is significant for a couple of reasons:

• Previously, the RTLS capabilities in DECT systems have been virtually non-existent
• RTLS is not just Wi-Fi: This demonstrates that RTLS can and will be used over other wireless technologies existing in the enterprises today
• The DECT technology has been very, very successful in the enterprise indoor phone system market

Unlike typical RTLS installations which are about tracking RTLS tags, DECT mobile phones are tracked. This allows applications like staff safety, workforce optimization, and simply finding persons more quickly when needed. Staff safety is the key application here to start off with.

I’ve been closely involved in this project since day one, and it’s been a smooth, quick ride. The people at NEC were both friendly and professional.  Some integration work was needed on both sides, but both parties handled it quickly and no major issues were encountered

You might be questioning the positioning accuracy in DECT networks, and I had to test this myself to believe the results: The accuracy is at least as good as with comparable Wi-Fi networks.

Of course, there are no DECT asset tags available (for now at least), but still, it’s a very interesting market: Thousands of healthcare facilities already have DECT installed, and there are  millions of DECT handsets out there.

Cheers,
Jussi Kiviniemi / Ekahau

What Is Sufficient Location Accuracy?

I wanted to post a few things about location accuracy, since that’s one of the key aspects of any location tracking solution.

First of all, you don’t want to buy a gun that doesn’t shoot straight. So you want to make sure the location system produces sufficient accuracy for your use case.

Then again, you can’t have it all: you can’t have inch-level accuracy throughout a multi-floor enterprise campus without investing millions and millions of dollars. Accuracy and cost go hand-in-hand in many cases: If you want inch-level tracking, be prepared to install expensive UWB or such infrastructure, and lots of it. Then again, there are fairly low-cost solutions for achieving very high accuracy in selected, even fairly large areas.

The key is to find a cost-effective solution that solves the use cases you’ve determined.

Accuracy for finding assets and people
For finding assets and people in an enterprise, you can live with a high-quality Wi-Fi network. For example, a Wi-Fi network that’s planned with voice in mind typically has enough access points to support this use case. With some Wi-Fi RTLS engines on the market and a well-designed, dense Wi-Fi network, it is possible to reach a room-level granularity up to 75-95% of the time enterprise wide. This is perfectly OK for a typical asset and people tracking case. If the asset is located on the next room down the hall one or two times out of ten, you will still find them quickly.

However, be careful since the location accuracy between different Wi-Fi location engines varies a lot – even if you have a very dense Wi-Fi network. You don’t want the location system to show the assets on an incorrect floor, or floating in the air far outside the building, for example. Perhaps suprisingly, the “floor hopping” issue is something several Wi-Fi location engines suffer from.

And it’s not just about the number of access points when it comes to accuracy of a Wi-Fi location system, it’s also about the placement of the WLAN access points (APs). If you have 10 APs placed right next to one another, the accuracy will be as bad as with just one AP. Ideally, some of the APs should be placed in the corners of the building, and staggered on different floors. This is not mandatory, but for achieving maximum granularity with Wi-Fi tracking it helps.

If you already have a Wi-Fi network, it simply doesn’t make much sense to me to deploy another infrastructure to find assets or people.

Accuracy for Staff Safety
In healthcare, staff safety is a common application for RTLS. The typical use case is “someone is in trouble ==> panic button/switch is pressed/pulled on the tag ==> an alarm with location information is sent to nearby personnel”.

For this also, tracking with just a good quality Wi-Fi network is typically good enough. Those who assist the person in trouble will find the correct room most of the time, and even if not, it’ll typically be the next room over (and if someone is being attacked, you’ll hear it). But if you want to be sure of the correct room the first time around, you might want to install extra infrastructure in the rooms to ensure high-level room accuracy.

Accuracy for Process Optimization / Workflow Automation
Process optimization and workflow automation to me means optimizing the processes either by analyzing history data, or in real-time, using information about who is/was where, and for how long, etc.

This may require precise information about the rooms the people have been in, and there may be little tolerance for error.

If the error tolerance is low, you want to deploy extra infrastructure to the operating rooms in a hospital, for example, to ensure high accuracy there. The rest of the hospital campus area may be fine with the granularity provided by standard Wi-Fi RTLS.

As said, there are systems out there that do both Wi-Fi RTLS and provide extra infrastructure (such as infrared transmitters) for areas requiring the highest degree of accuracy. Of course, you can mix-and-match different systems together, but the deployment, integration, and system maintenance may become a bit costly and time-consuming.

Huge RTLS Deployment in RFID Journal: http://bit.ly/8U2D6r

There’s a nice article in RFID Journal about the 15,000 tag / 5M square feet deployment.

OSUMC’s director of technology Chad Neal was interviewed also, so it’s not just your average vendor hype. Chad even talks about the evaluation, the accuracy results, the use cases, and so on.

Healthcare Asset Tracking in Florida

Since some of you may not be on the Ekahau news list, I’ve also put summaries of our press releases here. This time, it’s about – suprise, surprise – a healthcare RTLS deployment.

If you have no time to read through all the marketing hype in the press release, here’s a summary: Flagler Hospital, after evaluating various RTLS players (careful evaluation is always a good idea), selected Ekahau RTLS for tracking clinical and IT assets. In addition to various Wi-Fi RTLS players, Flagler also investigated UWB technology as a possible option but decided not go with that in the end.

The hospital is located in St. Augustine, Florida.

As Cisco is the market leader in Wi-Fi by far, and Cisco and Ekahau having a partnership, it’s not a huge surprise that this deployment also runs on a Cisco Wi-Fi network.

> Link to the press release

RTLS Requirements Part 2

Here’s the second part of the RTLS Requirements post. Last week we covered use cases, accuracy, and performance requirements. This time we’ll cover tags, integration, deployment tools, and couple of other points. Lot’s of things to discuss, so let’s get started!

4. Tag Battery Life and Form Factor

The battery life is a key consideration. The more often the tags need to report their location, the shorter the battery life. For tracking assets, Wi-Fi tags waking up once every 10 minutes may be fine, and you’ll get years of battery life. For tracking people in real-time, you may want to update the locations every 5 seconds, but then those tags can be reharged daily or weekly on a tag charger.

The RTLS vendor sales rep can provide you with the exact numbers the system can do. It’s up to you to determine a) what is the minimum battery life I can live with (how often the batteries can be recharged / changed) and b) what is the slowest location update frequency I can live with?  This needs to be considered for each tag type and use case. There’s differences in battery life and rechargeable / not with each RTLS provider, and with each tag model.

There’s tricks that can be used here to improve battery life and system performance: Using a motion sensor to wake up the tag is the most common one. Think of an asset tracking scenario: You can wake up the tag only when it moves, for example, or only when it stops moving. This way, you’ll always know the last location of the asset, and will maximize battery life. Or you can make a combination: “wake up the tag every hour and also whenever it moves”.

To ensure the correct form factor, simply ask for samples of all the tags you’ll use and see if they’re small enough or not.

5. Impact to Facility Daily Operations

When the system is deployed, you want to disturb the operations as little as possible. Cabling is probably the worst: You don’t want to pull more cabling runs unless absoltely necessary. Battery powered readers would be the ones to go with, if possible.

I would highly suggest using software-only solutions and those that utilize your existing Wi-Fi network if possible. But again, no freebies here: if you want true room accuracy (think process optimization), you will very likely need to put some readers in. Some Wi-Fi only solutions, however, are good enough for finding assets and providing staff safety without any additions.

6. Integration with Existing IT Systems

First thing is to ensure that, if you go with a Wi-Fi based solution, that your Wi-Fi vendor is supported. Typically all the major Wi-Fi RTLS vendors are supported by major Wi-Fi RTLS players. If you go with a vendor-specific RTLS solution, bear in mind that you may run into problems if you choose to expand the network with gear from a different Wi-Fi vendor.

The better the system integrates with your existing IT systems and policies, the better of course:

• If the tags need a network connection, ask for at least WPA2 security and DHCP support. If you have an asset management application, perhaps the vendor integrates with that?
• If you want to locate VoIP phones, perhaps the VoIP phone provider has RTLS optimized features (of one or more vendors) built-in to the phone?
• If you have a custom made application you’d like to add location capabilities to, have someone at your IT department (or your application provider or a consultant) look at the APIs from different vendors: How easy are they to integrate with?
• Do you have other Wi-Fi powered devices, like iPhones or laptops that you want to locate? If so, ask for the vendor how that is done, and test that also.

Even though a lot is possible by interfacing with the RTLS APIs, bear in mind: Don’t try to cover all the thinkable use cases in the first phase of the deployment: Keep things simple! Prioritize! Ask yourself, what are the key problems you want to solve today? What will you need in the short-term future? What are nice-to-haves or things that can be left out? Avoid scope creep at all costs!

7. Deployment Methods and Deployment Tool Features

How complicated and pricey is the system deployment? This varies a lot depending on the system: There’s various methods for system calibration, fine-tuning, tag management, the list is long. Ask the vendors for user guides and deployment guidelines – the more cryptic it looks like, the more problems you’ll have and the more time it takes. If you don’t completely understand all the deployment variables, ask. And if the vendor rep doesn’t know them either, get suspicious.

Ask from the reference customers  (you got those from your vendors, right) on how long and complicated the deployment process truly was. A good sign is if the system does not absolutely require vendor presence during deployment (although I would recommend to have them on-site at least for the first days of deployment).

Visual tools with easy-to-understand GUIs are preferred here. Some vendors can provide you with web-based deployment training presentations and even live webinars to go through the tools.

After the deployment, the vendor should be able to provide you with detailed reports about the infrastructure and location accuracy. If it’s a Wi-Fi based system, the vendor should also understand the Wi-Fi network in detail, and thus may be able to provide you with a detailed Wi-Fi site survey report also.

9. Reliability and performance

Of course, every RTLS vendor claims their system is “the most robust and the most scalable and the most whatnot”. Find out about the reliability by asking a few customers who have run the systems for years.

For performance, ask for the biggest deployments the vendors have and call them. An RTLS server should be able to handle at least 10,000-20,000 devices and be able to produce 500-1000 location updates in a second. Your facility size may also affect perfomance: If you have a massive campus, the RTLS server may require more memory. With some RTLS solutions, the accuracy degrades the larger the site is!

10. Requirements for Procedural Changes

When the system is taken into production, people using it and maintaining it will need to change how they work. Examples are employees having to carry tags and leave them into a charger when leaving work and grabbing them again in the morning, or learning to use a new asset management system. This is typically nothing major, but asking the employees about their opinions before the purchase gives you less resistance in the long run – and it’s the nice thing to do.

I hope this helps! Good luck with your RTLS project – may it be a successful one!

Cheers
Jussi Kiviniemi
Sr. Product Manager
Ekahau