I haven’t spent much time recently on the location tracking tools that I think will be a big part of hospital efficiency improvement in the future. The folks I met this weekend at LA County are thinking about them for next year when they move to a huge new emergency room, but the big fuss at HIMSS in 2006 around the asset and people location tracking has yet to really pan out.
But maybe the market is starting to take off. Yesterday one of the companies I’ve been following for a while, Ekahau, announced a big sale to big public hospital system Carolinas HealthCare System. Given that the inherent chaos that most hospitals appear to live with (to the uneducated eye—yes, I’m picking on LA County, but you know there’s some truth in that!), the potential for efficiency improvements from asset tracking and improved communications are very real.
