AeroScout Announces First Wi-Fi RFID Tag that Withstands the Rigorous Sterilization Processes Required for Surgical Equipment
New Autoclave Tag tracks critical equipment to help hospitals improve staff efficiency, automate inventory management, and optimize OR workflow.
Redwood City, California, December 16, 2010—AeroScout, the leading provider of Healthcare Visibility Solutions, announced the first Wi-Fi RFID Tag for tracking surgical equipment through its entire lifecycle – from sterilization to the operating room. AeroScout’s Autoclave Tags withstand rigorous sterilization processes including ultrasonic cleaning, high pressure liquid sterilization and steam autoclaving. The combination of these new tags with AeroScout’s Healthcare RTLS solution allows hospitals to improve staff efficiency, automate inventory management and optimize operating room workflow. The AeroScout Autoclave Tag attaches to and tracks surgical instrument trays and other equipment as they progress through the numerous stages of preparation for surgical procedures and then through the perioperative process. After every use, surgical equipment requires thorough sterilization, often including an autoclave. Therefore, the AeroScout Tag needs to repeatedly withstand extreme conditions.
Using AeroScout’s Healthcare Asset Tracking and Management solution, hospital staff can quickly locate and determine the status of items throughout the sterilization and perioperative processes, significantly reducing the time spent searching for the instruments or equipment required for a procedure. Real-time visibility ensures that critical items are available when needed, thereby increasing staff satisfaction, shortening operating room preparation time and increasing throughput. In addition, automated inventory management of surgical trays in multiple locations is continually maintained, enabling better planning and scheduling of activities.
The AeroScout Autoclave Tag handles temperatures of 135° C (275° F) and pressures from vacuum up to 35 PSI experienced during cleaning and sterilization, which involves steam, high temperatures, high pressures and vacuums. In addition, the tag is designed to deliver a battery life of two years and withstand the harsh conditions of hundreds of sterilization cycles.?Proper sterilization of surgical instruments is imperative for patient safety, and the new tag is a valuable extension of AeroScout’s overall solution for operating rooms that improves operational efficiency and patient care. AeroScout’s solution set is robust and includes staff and patient tracking throughout key milestones, wireless temperature monitoring of refrigeration units, humidity monitoring of surgery and patient rooms, asset management of medical equipment and patient and staff safety applications.
“The Autoclave Tag is a natural evolution of AeroScout’s offerings, and further expands our value for high acuity areas such as perioperative departments,” said Gabi Daniely, Vice President of Marketing and Product Strategy at AeroScout. ”As with all AeroScout solutions, this new tag leverages a hospital’s standard Wi-Fi network, which reduces cost and deployment time, and increases the value of existing infrastructure. Thus, AeroScout is not only helping improve clinical workflow and operational efficiency, but we’re doing it in a cost-effective manner.”
About AeroScout
AeroScout is the market leader in Unified Asset Visibility solutions. Customers improve operational efficiency using AeroScout products that leverage standard Wi-Fi networks to track and manage the location, condition and status of mobile assets and people.
AeroScout’s global customer base consists of leading hospital, manufacturing and logistics organizations, including many of the Fortune 500. The company invented the first Wi-Fi-based Active RFID tag, and today is widely recognized as leading the market in number of deployments and tags shipped. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, AeroScout has offices in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and Latin America. For more information, visit www.aeroscout.com.