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A wireless location service at a Harrisburg, Pa., hospital has finally solved a problem that you never see addressed on "Grey's Anatomy" or "ER": where to find a wheelchair in a sprawling 546-bed hospital.
The basic wireless technology that's been used for real-time location services in outdoor dockyards, container freight yards and railways is moving indoors.The Yankee Group last year estimated the 2005 global market for all types of realtime location systems to be about $20 million and that it will skyrocket to $1.6 billion in 2010.
A group of wireless vendors, using a mix of proprietary and standards-based radio gear, and a growing array of software application companies, now offer enterprise users the chance to layer on a network of wireless tags and access points to identify track and locate both things and people. Harrisburg Hospital is doing both.
The hospital, part of Pinnacle Health System, first deployed in early 2005 a wireless tracking system for surgical patients.The application is PathFmder from PeriOptimum of Pittsburgh. The software works with the 433MHz radio tags and access points from Lawrence, Mass.-based Radianse.
PathFmder gives Web-based minute-by-minute data on each patient's location and status during the entire surgical process, drawing positioning coordinates from the Radianse hardware and location algorithm, and mapping...