CNN Money: In clinical environments, an accurate real-time locating system (RTLS) can do so much more than simply help locate equipment. For more than 20 years, Versus Technology, Inc. (Versus) has devoted its time, energy and resources to developing and supporting RTLS applications that do everything from basic locating to automated patient flow and advanced workflow automation.

With hundreds of happy clients, countless integrations and an expanding partner group, Versus is pleased to showcase the most transformational RTLS applications in existence at this year's Health Information Management Systems Society conference, (HIMSS). You'll find Versus at booth #7949, the Rauland-Borg booth (#5603) and at Microsoft®'s booth (#6733) during exhibit hall hours, with special presentations from Ginger Banks and Steve Willis, both of PeaceHealth, at the Product Pavilion Session on Tuesday, March 2, from 3:15pm-4pm and at the American Hospital Association's booth (#6115) on Monday, March 1 from 4:30pm-5:15pm. These presentations will focus on using the Versus system for situational awareness and improved patient flow.

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TMCnet.com: Patient Care Technology Systems, a subsidiary of Consulier Engineering, Inc., has announced that the company’s Amelior Tracker system has been selected by South Jersey Healthcare Regional Medical Center to automatically track and effectively manage physician location and communication inside and outside the hospital.

South Jersey Healthcare Regional Medical Center is a 262-bed facility in Vineland, N.J. To complement and enhance the delivery of responsive, efficient care, the integrated medical campus, which is a part of the South Jersey Healthcare network, is uniquely designed.

The installation will include the Amelior Tracker solution which is a part of the Amelior Enterprise Visibility Suite comprising department to facility-wide software solutions and services designed to more efficiently and safely orchestrate patient care through the real-time visualization of patient flow. The installation is expected to get completed by spring 2010.

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Fresh News: TRAVERSE CITY, MI -- (Marketwire) -- 02/17/10 -- Rouge Valley Health System (RVHS) recently selected Versus Technology, Inc.'s (Versus) Real-time Locating System (RTLS) to advance efficiency and safety within the new Rouge Valley Ajax and Pickering emergency department (ED). Though Versus has been providing location-based clinical workflow automation to hospitals and clinics for years, the solution at Ajax and Pickering will be the first of its kind to support Ministry of Health and Long-term Care performance goals. This is especially important to RVHS as Ajax/Pickering undergoes an expansion and expects ED patient volume to surge to 60,000 annual visits.

In 2008, RVHS was one of 23 hospitals selected by the Ontario government to focus on reducing ED wait times. "Efficient patient flow is evidenced to have a positive impact on safety, satisfaction and revenue," explains Darren Micallef, Consultant, HC4Site. "The provincial target wait times are very achievable at 8 hours for complex conditions and 4 hours for minor conditions, but hospitals struggle with identifying roadblocks. Bringing in an expert at patient flow, like Versus, is key to ensuring that the provincial targets are not only achieved, but achieved in a manner that is timely, efficient, intuitive for staff and that complements Rouge Valley's unique processes."

The Versus RTLS solution will be deployed in phases. The first phase will include a Dashboard, with key performance indicators (KPIs) like 'overall length of stay' and 'bed assignment to room' times displayed in real-time. A centrally-located electronic whiteboard (also available at individual workstations) will convey patient location and relevant patient information, like assigned caregivers.

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News Reel Network: Sellersville, PA, February 20, 2010 — Intelligent InSites, Inc., announced today that Rockhill Mennonite Community (Rockhill), a continuing care retirement community located in Sellersville, Pennsylvania, has implemented the InSites Enterprise Visibility Platform™ as the core of its resident care & safety solution. The innovative “indoor positioning system” offered by Intelligent InSites integrates real-time location sensing hardware provided by CenTrak and communication devices, such as pagers and PDAs, to monitor movement throughout the community and provides accurate and instant location information to enhance the level of care, services, and safety. Each resident is provided a small pendant, which allows them to request assistance from anywhere in the facility by simply pressing a button on the pendant. The assistance request instantly alerts staff of the resident’s name, photo, and precise location. Requests for assistance are also delivered automatically on the residents behalf should the solution sense a potentially troublesome situation, such as entering a restricted area or spending an inordinate amount of time without movement. Additionally, the software provides, updated in real-time, a map view of the facility with an icon for representing each staff member, resident, or even equipment, as they move around the facility. This way staff can head to that specific location without any delay, a tremendous improvement over traditional nurse call systems, which rely on the residents to activate alerts and do not provide their current location. The InSites solution also supports inputs and alerts from other systems, such as fall prevention, access control, or healthcare information systems, to be delivered through the InSites mobile workflow engine so the critical information is provided immediately to the right caregiver regardless of where they may be. “Staff have commented on their sense of improved productivity after implementing the InSites solution. That equates to additional time that can be redirected towards resident care,” said Ron Sawatsky, CEO of Rockhill. The implementation of the InSites solution also provides families more insight into the lives of their loved ones. The system is able to passively record resident activities, thereby providing a way for families and caregivers to ensure residents are involved in day-to-day events and interactions, and not simply being sedentary for hours. “The value of understanding what activities residents participate in allows us to better serve their needs, which directly relates to their overall satisfaction,” Sawatsky explained. “We are proud to partner with Rockhill as they embrace the use of these innovative, yet practical, technologies to elevate the level of care they are able to provide their residents. We’ve found that residents most appreciate the independence and sense of security the system provides, while the staff really likes the time it saves them each day,” commented Mark Rheault, President and CEO of Intelligent InSites. “InSites solution enables us to fulfill our mission of improving our residents’ quality of life by providing best care, service and safety,” Sawatsky concluded.

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Medic Exchange: Visonic Technologies (VT), a global leader in unified RFID / RTLS safety and security solutions for the global healthcare industry, announces the immediate availability of its enhanced Elpas Active RFID/RTLS Reusable Tag. The tag’s unique form factor and comfort, now makes it more suitable for providing abduction deterrence for newborns and infants in maternity units and neonatal care departments or for the monitoring and tracking of high-risk patients who show signs of elopement and or wandering.

The tag’s dual technology transmitter emits low power, beacon type UHF radio frequency (RF) messages as well as supplemental infra-red (IR) messages that can be used to determine the location of the infant/patient to room level and sub-room level precision in open and enclosed indoor spaces without EMF interference to hospital equipment.

The Reusable Tag incorporates a magnetic low frequency (LF) receiver that adds chokepoint area detection so whenever a patient/infant physically comes in close proximity to a prohibited exit/entrance a security intervention alarm can be configured to automatically trigger. The tag also transmits supervision messages for keeping security personnel informed of device tampering or the unsupervised removal of the patient/infant from the protected area.

The Elpas Reusable Tag has been reengineered in direct response to the growing need for more effective user-friendly, risk management tools in acute care hospitals, psychiatric units, geriatric care clinics; long-term nursing care facilities or pediatric units. “The use of the Elpas Reusable Tag for infant/patient identification, baby/mother matching, wandering patient monitoring, emergency calls and exit/entrance alerting provides healthcare professionals with an innovative solution to these worrisome concerns," said Michael Wasserstein, CEO of Visonic Technologies. “Additionally, the tag’s field-proven hospital-grade IP-67 water-rating outer casing, together with its new low power design ensures more then three years of maintenance-free patient deployments.”

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PRWEB: Newtown, PA (PRWEB) November 18, 2009 -- CenTrak, a leading provider of Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) for tracking equipment, patients and staff indoors, today announced the release of its new AlerTrak active RFID alarm for hospitals and healthcare facilities. The device notifies hospital personnel via an audible alert if specified people or assets leave or enter a restricted area, providing a valuable new tool for reducing infection spread, patient wandering, and inventory loss.

"A challenge for many hospitals is retention - keeping people and assets where they are supposed to be at all times," said Ari Naim, Ph.D., president and CEO of CenTrak. "AlerTrak actively helps healthcare organizations achieve this goal. For example, the device can be used to create local audible alerts if a quarantined patient leaves a designated area and hospital personnel can be notified immediately to correct the situation. This is especially important right now as the world faces a growing flu pandemic."

Originally developed for patient tag loss prevention, the IT-150 AlerTrak device triggers alerts when hospital-designated tags come within a pre-defined zone. It can be placed at egress and ingress points, or other critical locations. The device can be configured to generate quick audible alerts that can be leveraged by CenTrak solution provider partners.

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RFID News: Eastern Maine Medical Center’s (EMMC) newly renovated 32,000 square foot Imaging Center has recently installed a Real-time Locating System (RTLS) in order to better manage patient flow.

Versus Technology’s RTLS automatically captures time parameters related to each patient’s visit, including wait time and time to complete a particular imaging service.

Imaging Center staff can then make real-time comparisons to benchmarked goals, perform more accurate scheduling based on actual time to complete certain procedures, and better inform patients as to expected wait and procedure times.

Additionally, Versus automatically identifies room status as available, in-use, reserved, in-process (being cleaned) or unavailable based on patient locations

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Earth Times: CHARLOTTE, NC and NEWPORT BEACH, CA -- 10/14/09 -- Patient Care Technology Systems (PCTS), a subsidiary of Consulier Engineering, Inc. (NASDAQ: CSLR), today announced that Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian has implemented the company's Amelior EDTracker® solution to automatically track patients in its 66,000-census emergency department. The solution integrates an ultrasonic real-time locating system (RTLS) from PCTS business partner, Sonitor Technologies.

Amelior EDTracker is part of the Amelior Enterprise Visibility Suite(TM) which comprises departmental to facility-wide solutions to streamline patient flow through the real-time visualization and documentation of patient care. Hospitals can scale their implementations by the entities they wish to track (movable medical equipment, patients, staff), operational goals (asset management, patient flow, infection control) and by scope of care (acute care, outpatient services, inpatient floors, facility-wide).

The web-based Amelior EDTracker software visualizes patient flow by automatically identifying the location and status of patients and equipment without requiring manual updates by busy caregivers. Location information is generated by integrating with a facility's choice of RTLS. Hoag selected ultrasonic locating from Sonitor Technologies for its room and bay-level locating precision and accuracy. Workflow algorithms within the Amelior EDTracker software interpret the meaning of location, movement and interactions between patients, staff and equipment to automatically communicate patient care milestones as they occur. Interfaces to ADT, lab, and radiology systems integrate additional patient and order status information creating a centralized workflow communication and management portal for the emergency department.

"The implementation of automatic patient tracking is a significant step forward in workflow visibility and automation for our emergency department," said Raymond Ricci MD, FACEP, director of emergency medicine. "We are dedicated to providing our patients with the most efficient and safest care possible. Amelior EDTracker is helping us to transform the efficiency of our department."

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Amazon (Murtuza Attarwala): Would recommend this book to anyone who is actively working with Location Based Services, or is planning on working with Location Based Services. The initial sections of the book gives comprehensive use cases, where location based services are/can be used. The author then goes into the details of different technologies that are out there in the market that can be used to implement these services. For each technology, the author first describes the technology and then discusses the pros/cons of using that technology to implement the solution. These gives a very good idea, of what technology should be used from the cost/technical perspective for a particular solution. For e.g. what is the expected responsiveness of RTLS for your particular solution, what is the accuracy that you desire, is it room-level or is zone-level good enough, how big a tag is acceptable for your solution, what is the expected battery life of the tag. This book is a must read for anyone interested in Location based services.

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PR News Wire: BATESVILLE, Ind., and ANDOVER, Mass., Sept 02, 2009 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Hill-Rom /quotes/comstock/13*!hrc/quotes/nls/hrc (HRC 20.41, 0.00, 0.00%) and Radianse today announced a strategic partnership agreement to integrate the Radianse real-time location system (RTLS) into Hill-Rom's leading NaviCare(R) Nurse Call system. With this move, Hill-Rom intends to extend its leadership in health care locating beyond staff tracking to remove financial and technical obstacles for health care customers as they consider high-precision, enterprise-wide RTLS for equipment, patients and staff.

More than 800 health care customers now use Hill-Rom's integrated locating solution. The addition of Radianse RTLS as an option for future implementations follows an independent verification of Radianse location accuracy and precision reliability. "This partnership is truly an exciting opportunity," said Mike Gallup, general manager of Hill-Rom IT Solutions. "Every hospital must have a nurse call system. Soon, health care providers will be able to enjoy the benefits of locating staff, patients, and equipment all off of one integrated nurse communications platform from Hill-Rom. This will help them know when and where equipment, patients and staff move and interact--real-time visibility that can increase caregiver effectiveness and enhance patient safety."

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