CenTrak Releases New Temperature Tag for Healthcare
Newtown, PA, July 8, 2009 — CenTrak, a leading provider of Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) for tracking equipment and people indoors, today announced the release of its new Temperature Tag (TempTag) for use with its InTouchCare 2.0™ asset and people tracking system. CenTrak’s TempTag is unique in its ability to track, wirelessly report and help ensure correct temperature levels of refrigerators and freezers in a healthcare setting. The devices can generate alerts when the temperature goes above or below preset parameters, and provide temperature logs, which eliminate human error and the cost of manual temperature documentation. The TempTag’s ability to monitor a large range of temperatures, from cryogenic to room temperature, means no additional monitoring devices are needed. Other temperature monitors function with higher battery consumption resulting in limited battery life of a few months, while CenTrak’s TempTag battery life is measured in years.
CenTrak’s TempTags are currently being used by hospitals and healthcare facilities to monitor refrigerators storing medications and blood supply to ensure both are being stored and dispensed at the proper temperatures. This level of tracking detail gives hospital administrators the guarantee that drugs are being given to patients in compliance with guidelines and regulations.
“At CenTrak, we’re always finding new ways to help hospitals make better decisions about patient care and their own operations,” said Ari Naim, Ph.D., president and CEO of CenTrak. “With our TempTag, we’re giving them a whole new level of certainty that pharmaceuticals and blood products are being used safely – which in turn results in better patient care and a variety of cost savings. The TempTag is seamlessly integrated into our RTLS network so it can be readily added to existing installations. Conversely, its installation can be leveraged to more easily provide a future RTLS infrastructure.”
Other benefits of the TempTag include the elimination of costs associated with wasted pharmaceuticals that require specific temperatures; compliance with internal and external regulations on pharmaceutical use; reduction in spoiled or expired blood supply; and adherence to regulations on blood storage and transmission. Additionally, LEDs on the TempTag can trigger a local alert if an asset is compromised.
CenTrak’s InTouchCare 2.0 differs from legacy technologies in its combined use of a patented new generation of infrared (Gen2IR) and radio frequency identification (RFID). Monitors transmit a unique room number using Gen2IR which is received by any tag in that room. The tag communicates the room number and its own unique ID via RF to the InTouchCare Location Server through an antenna using a hospital’s existing wired or Wi-Fi network, where it can be accessed in real-time by hospital personnel.
Like light, Gen2IR will not pass through walls and does not suffer from traditional infrared line-of-sight limitations. Therefore, when a tag reads a room number, there are no errors. This is certainty-based RTLS. Unlike estimation-based information, certainty-based location data can be used by hospitals to make important decisions, such as when to clean a patient room, and even for automated decisions, such as determining if a patient requires a physician visit if they have not been attended to in a given period of time. Most healthcare workflow improvements can only be realized when the location data is certainty-based.
?
CenTrak is a leading provider of precise, adaptable, and cost-effective tracking infrastructure for healthcare facilities. The patented InTouchCare™ Real Time Location System (RTLS) infrastructure uniquely combines Gen2IR and active RFID technologies to deliver certainty-based or error free data, a requirement for workflow and other important applications. As the only predominantly battery-powered RTLS technology, CenTrak offers a simple and cost effective installation unattainable with legacy solutions. InTouchCare™ is currently operating in millions of square feet at dozens of world-class healthcare sites in the United States. For more information about CenTrak, please visit www.centrak.com.