Towards Vision-Based Smart Hospitals: A System for Tracking and Monitoring Hand Hygiene Compliance

One in twenty-five patients admitted to a hospital will suffer from a hospital acquired infection. If we can intelligently track healthcare staff, patients, and visitors, we can better understand the sources of such infections. We envision a smart hospital capable of increasing operational efficiency and improving patient care with less spending. In this paper, we propose a non-intrusive vision-based system for tracking people's activity in hospitals. We evaluate our method for the problem of measuring hand hygiene compliance. Empirically, our method outperforms existing solutions such as proximity-based techniques and covert in-person observational studies. We present intuitive, qualitative results that analyze human movement patterns and conduct spatial analytics which convey our method's interpretability. This work is a step towards a computer-vision based smart hospital and demonstrates promising results for reducing hospital acquired infections.Comment: Machine Learning for Healthcare Conference (MLHC

A (digital) finger on the pulse

Complex Event Processing (CEP) is a computer-based technique used to track, analyse and process data in real-time (as an event happens). It establishes correlations between streams of information and matches to defined behaviour

Benefits of connecting rfid and lean principles in health care

The performance management process in health care is far behind compared to the manufacturing and service industries. Although nowadays the health care organizations are able to deal with a greater rank diseases, their cost, quality and delivery has essentially not improved significantly, and the difference with the other industries even seems to have increased. As opposed to this situation health care has a tremendous opportunity to deploy lean principles to reduce internal/external costs, improve patient safety, increase profits, reduce litigation and decrease the dependence on Government and Insurance. The application of these principles is being facilitated by the use of the new technologies. A new technology allowing personnel to constantly "see" what's happening with regards to patients schedule, backlog, workflow, inventory levels, resource utilization, quality, etc., is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The aim of this paper is to analyse the benefits that can be derived from the joint use of lean principles and RFID technology in health care

M-health review: joining up healthcare in a wireless world

In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver health and social care. This trend is bound to continue as providers (whether public or private) strive to deliver better care to more people under conditions of severe budgetary constraint

An Integrated Conceptual Framework for RFID Enabled Healthcare

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology is a wireless communication technology that facilitates automatic identification and data capture without human intervention. Since 2000s, RFID applications in the health care industry are increasing.  RFID has brought many improvements in areas like patient care, patient safety, equipment tracking, resource utilization, processing time reduction and so on. On the other hand, often deployment of RFID is questioned on the issues like high capital investment, technological complexity, and privacy concerns. Exploration of existing literature indicates the presence of works on the topics like asset management, patient management, staff management, institutional advantages, and organizational issues. However, most of the works are focused on a particular issue. Still now, scholarly attempts to integrate all the facades of RFID-enabled healthcare are limited. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework that represents the scope for implementation of this technology and the various dimensions of RFID-enabled healthcare and demonstrate them in detail. Also, we have discussed the critical issues that can prove to be potential barriers to its successful implementation and current approaches to resolving these. We also discuss some of the regulatory initiatives encouraging its adoption in the healthcare industry. Also, we have highlighted the future research opportunities in this domain

Technology Target Studies: Technology Solutions to Make Patient Care Safer and More Efficient

Presents findings on technologies that could enhance care delivery, including patient records and medication processes; features and functionality nurses require, including tracking, interoperability, and hand-held capability; and best practices

BENEFITS OF CONNECTING RFID AND LEAN PRINCIPLES IN HEALTH CARE

The performance management process in health care is far behind compared to the manufacturing and service industries. Although nowadays the health care organizations are able to deal with a greater rank diseases, their cost, quality and delivery has essentially not improved significantly, and the difference with the other industries even seems to have increased. As opposed to this situation health care has a tremendous opportunity to deploy lean principles to reduce internal/external costs, improve patient safety, increase profits, reduce litigation and decrease the dependence on Government and Insurance. The application of these principles is being facilitated by the use of the new technologies. A new technology allowing personnel to constantly "see" what’s happening with regards to patients schedule, backlog, workflow, inventory levels, resource utilization, quality, etc., is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The aim of this paper is to analyse the benefits that can be derived from the joint use of lean principles and RFID technology in health care.

RFID adoption in healthcare organizations in UAE

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is currently regarded as one of the most promising technologies, and considered as one of the sixteen key technologies in the coming decade, specifically in terms of its use, pervasiveness, market demand and commercial availability. RFID is perceived as critical technology for many purposes and applications, such as improving the efficiency and effectiveness in business operations and improving customer service. This research therefore has a hedonic motivation in developing an incorporated view of theoretical framework to identify factors that affect RFID adoption in healthcare and providing an empirical analysis of the effect of both organizational and individual factors on the diffusion of RFID based on the health care industry. Unlike other studies, the current study places more attention on individual factors in addition to the organizational factors and technological factors in an attempt to better understand the phenomenon of RFID adoption in health care, which is described as a complex and a very demanding work environment. This study serves to fill a gap in the existing literature through explaining of how user factors can contribute to the adoption of RFID in healthcare and how such factors might lead to better understanding of the benefits, use and impacts of RFID in health care sector

RFID-ENABLED CAPABILITIES AND THEIR IMPACT ON HEALTHCARE PROCESS PERFORMANCE

In recent years, hospitals have begun to invest in RFID systems to control costs, reduce errors, and improve quality of care. Despite the transformative impact that RFID may have in healthcare settings, few studies have examined how and why this change may occur. The purpose of this study is to systematically understand how RFID can transform work practices and address cost, safety, and quality of care issues, most notably in inventory management. We leverage a sociomateriality framework to explore the causal linkages that connect the material properties of RFID with the behavioral changes that are observed through its use. By linking the material properties of RFID with innovations in existing practices, we provide a data-driven account of how and why RFID is useful in this setting. In doing so, we also contribute to recent work by IS scholars who argue for a reconfiguration of conventional assumptions regarding the role of technology in contemporary organizations. By adopting this perspective, we recast the issue of whether or not IT matters, and instead offer interesting and useful insight into how and why it does