Educational

Introducing an indoor tracking system for hospitals

Anew indoor software-tracking system conceived at Henry Ford Innovations (HFI) in Detroit, US for use in hospitals is being compared to GPS for its functionality. The two developers behind the system called Novatrack say it has the potential to be a ‘game changer’ in healthcare for its capability and precision to optimise operations and improve efficiencies. The ability to track mobility services, such as patient transport and housekeeping (cleaning hospital rooms between patients), in real time allows hospitals to look for opportunities to improve routine tasks, routes and their coordination.

During December 2019 HFI announced an exclusive licensing agreement with NAVV Systems, a Detroit-based start-up company, to market Novatrack commercially. The agreement is the latest licensing agreement made by HFI to develop and commercialise its intellectual assets. Since its inception in 2011, HFI, the innovations arm of Henry Ford Health System, has signed 30 licensing agreements representing US$350 million in future revenue.

“This is a win-win-win situation,” Joseph Jankowski, PhD, an HFI senior advisor, says of Novatrack. “It saves time because it makes better use of hospital resources, but it also improves the overall patient experience. Staff are more efficient in their work and patient transports and discharges are better managed, which creates a much better working environment for everybody involved in the care process.”

Novatrack is believed to be a firstof-its-kind software for coordinating indoor hospital logistics. It’s based on the hospital’s floor print and uses the hospital’s wireless network and Apple’s indoor positioning system to provide real-time visualisation and location of staff who carry iPhones equipped with the Novatrack app. Managers monitor the staff’s location from a traffic-control centre and communicate with them via text messaging. For privacy and security reasons, neither patients nor patient information are part of Novatrack.

Novatrack is the brainchild of two Henry Ford Health team members Paul Zieske, programme manager of location services in information technology, and Daniel Siegal, MD, vice chair of the Department of Radiology. Zieske introduced the concept as one of the fellows in the 2014–15 inaugural class of HFI’s Davidson Fellowship programme, which provides training and education for developing and commercialising digital technologies. It’s also where Zieske and Siegal teamed up, and the concept gained traction from there.

After completing the fellowship, Zieske and Siegal built a prototype and, with the backing of hospital leadership, began testing it in October 2018 with patient transport and housekeeping services at Henry Ford Hospital, the health system’s flagship hospital. It is now being expanded for use in in-patient pharmacy and soon in in-patient food-delivery services. In 2020, the software is also planned for use at Henry Ford’s other four acutecare hospitals.

“The concept we’re using to describe this is traffic control for

healthcare,” says Zieske, who early in his career worked for the Federal Aviation Administration and was part of the team that installed radar systems at the Detroit Metro Airport. “It shows the very precise location of workers and a little call-out with their name on the screen and the floor that they’re on.” Siegal says Novatrack could be a ‘game changer’ in healthcare because of its process improvement capability. “Think about GPS on your phone outdoors. Now you have the ability to do that indoors (with Novatrack),” he says. “This is a tool to help end users be more efficient”, says Siegal.

“I think in 10 years, more probably even 5 years, you’ll be behind the curve if you don’t have some kind of locationbased tool in your healthcare system,” says Siegal.

Both Zieske and Siegal emphasised that Novatrack is not for monitoring staff’s whereabouts in a Big Brother way. “We’ve been very open about it with staff,” says Zieske. “The reason we are tracking them is we want to improve safety and efficiency.”

For the health conscious, though, Novatrack can measure your walking distance on a shift. “I once showed a transporter how far he had walked inside the building,” Zieske says. “You should have seen his face light up when he realised he had already walked 8.85 km that day.”