Putting the ‘Where’ in Patient Care

Why Location is Key to Addressing Care Quality and Healthcare Inefficiencies

By Mohammed Smadi, PhD

Every day, healthcare leaders are challenged to provide quality care while maintaining a positive balance sheet. This goal has been harder to achieve in recent years, despite advances in medical technology and patient safety.

For example, The New England Journal of Medicine reported that nearly a quarter of hospital admissions resulted in at least one adverse event in 2018 and 23% of those events were deemed to be preventable. Between 2023 and 2024, hospitals experienced a double-digit increase in non-labor expenses, according to Strata. As a result, 40% of American hospitals had been losing money from operations during that time, KaufmanHall found.

Real-time location services (RTLS) can address these issues and many others. While this technology has historically been overlooked due to its cost and limited accuracy, recent developments in AI and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) have made RTLS solutions more affordable and accessible.

Before BLE 5.1, legacy versions of BLE relied on signal strength, also known as Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI), to estimate indoor locations. While it was innovative at the time, it often led to inaccuracies such as concluding that a tracked item or person is in an adjacent room. The introduction of BLE 5.1 changed that. By using multiple antennas to locate an item, BLE 5.1 allows for more precision with a greater degree of accuracy when estimating location. Pair BLE 5.1 with AI-driven algorithms and RTLS is capable of room-level or even sub-room level accuracy without the need for more expensive supplementary technologies like infrared or ultrasound.

These advances have reduced the negative stigma associated with RTLS, and healthcare organizations now can use location to their advantage without fear of inaccuracies causing more problems than they solve.

How RTLS can benefit healthcare organizations

There are a few ways that AI-powered RTLS can help hospitals and health systems provide better care without sacrificing their bottom line.

Locating critical equipment

Hospitals can use RTLS to track and manage medical equipment like heart monitors and IV pumps. This helps reduce delays in patient care by ensuring that important equipment is available when staff need it and stored where it’s needed most. With a better understanding of when, where, and how critical equipment is used, hospitals won’t need to pay for expensive rentals or bear the cost of longer patient stays due to delayed care.

Keeping at-risk patients safe

Healthcare providers can use RTLS to keep tabs on memory care, pediatric, and mental health patients. Location-based alerts can prevent these high-risk patients from wandering into unauthorized areas that could potentially jeopardize the safety of themselves or others.

A key use case for RTLS is infant protection—using tags or bands that set off alarms if an infant is taken outside of designated safety zones. This allows hospitals to protect infants and reduce risks for abduction.

Helping patients find their way

One study showed that about 30% of patients are late for appointments and the average no-show rate in healthcare continues to be 15%-20%. One might not naturally think of indoor wayfinding to improve care quality, but by providing GPS-like, turn-by-turn directions, wayfinding can reduce the incidence of late arrivals and missed appointments. It’s a powerful way to improve patient and staff workflows.

Wayfinding can also help hospitals become more efficient by freeing up staff to focus on key administrative tasks and providing patient care. An Emory study found that lost patients cost the hospital $220,000 per year in labor—an expensive use of valuable resources that could be better allocated elsewhere.

Optimizing staff visibility and patient flow

RTLS solutions can be used to track the location of healthcare staff so they can be quickly located in emergency situations or when additional assistance is needed. Another valuable use is monitoring patient movement, which can help staff anticipate patient needs and better allocate resources.

For example, RTLS can help healthcare providers predict patient arrivals and departures, allowing them to manage room occupancy and proactively prepare rooms for the next patient, thereby reducing wait times. According to CMS data, median emergency department (ED) wait times in the U.S. are more than two-and-a-half hours, increasing from 149 minutes in 2021 to 162 minutes in 2023. Given that studies have shown that prolonged ED wait times are associated with poor patient outcomes, using RTLS to optimize patient flow and ultimately reduce wait times can have a significant impact on the quality of care.

Leveraging RTLS to improve patient care

The healthcare landscape is constantly evolving, and healthcare organizations need to implement newer technologies and approaches to keep up or they risk getting left behind. AI-powered RTLS solutions can be applied in numerous ways to make staff more efficient while improving patient outcomes, resulting in heightened satisfaction overall.

Hospitals and health systems that successfully leverage these technologies can find themselves ahead of the curve and better positioned to focus on providing high-quality patient care.

Mohammed Smadi, PhD, is the CEO of Penguin Location Services and leads business and technical development in positioning solutions and location technology. Prior to this role, he founded Karmatix, a telematics-based loyalty program, where he coined the term “road- as-a-service.” Smadi also served as a principal researcher at BlackBerry, focusing on Wi-Fi Quality of Experience. A co-founder of ErgoWiFi, he holds numerous patents and earned his Ph.D., M.A.Sc., and B.Eng. & Mgmt. from McMaster University’s ECE, where he is an adjunct assistant professor.