Healthcare Industry Deals With its Assets. As we all know COVID-19 pandemic has strained the whole world and the healthcare industry at most. Now it is important for the healthcare industry to grow further with evolved methods and plans during and after the lockdown. As there is no way this industry could work as it was doing before pandemic, circumstances to challenge everything has changed.
There are lots of changes that need to be on the page to make it happen at administrative and clinic level. Some changes are required to be adapted to make this at normal level during this pandemic.
Today we cannot meet people in close, arrange mass meetings, but we have to ensure the social distancing, hand hygiene, masks, shields, sanitizing as our normal practice in the future, in order to prevent us all from being infected with the virus until the vaccine is in production.
According to the statistics, there are over 7.5 million people those are infected with COVID-19 globally. The cases have enormously increased from 470 to 4 lakhs, in March. This data is only of three months from the time it was announced pandemic from WHO.
In-between this India announced the largest lockdown in the world, making highest population to sit at their homes in order to prevent the transmission of the virus. All the travelling was banned, interstate as well as international. But still the number of cases continues to rise so it is a huge responsibility at individual level to make sure of the sanitization, wearing masks, etc.
Here, healthcare industry faced a huge storm whether it is facing the challenges of the virus, treating patients, controlling measures or creating the vaccines.
Anyhow, it is expected from healthcare asset management market to rise from 6.89 USD in 2017 to 35.19 USD by 2023, with a CAGR of 31.4%. Now let’s see how much the industry can make up to it, in such circumstances.
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Requirement of Asset Management Solution
The pressure on the industry is to manage their existing workforce and adapt an automated asset management solution to track equipment and assets in a better and convenient way. Most of the hospitals and healthcare centers invest in a huge amount in tracking their hospital equipment which is right but needs to be done in a smarter way.
I have an instance to describe my point, once there was missing hospital equipment of worth 6 million USD from Louisiana State University (LSU) hospitals, because the newly purchased equipment was not properly tracked.
Thus, it will be concluded as waste of time and money, which is not at all an option in the ongoing pandemic; we are already short with the resources here so, wasting them is not an option.
The wastage of time in searching of assets and equipment can lead to serious consequences in the ongoing scenario. Also, according to a survey, more than 1/3rd of the nurses spends approx. 1 hour searching for the equipment they need, in their average shift of the day. This impacts the budget but also compromises the quality of care that a patient requires.
Fields of requirement in healthcare industry:
Hospital Asset Management
- Equipment Tracking and Management
- Patient Management
- Temperature and Humidity Control
- Staff Management
- Infection Control and Hand Hygiene Compliance
Pharmaceutical Asset Management
- Drug Anti-counterfeiting
- Supply Chain Management
Patient Registration at Remote Testing Facility
With the enormously increasing cases of COVID- 19, is has become important to maintain the records of all the patients that have been admitted to the hospital for their treatment. Here RFID technology is very beneficial with its ease of implementation. The RFID technology has greatly released the pressure from remote testing facilities linked to the patient’s data entry. It enables the utilization of mobile devices to record the patient’s check-in records with patient ID wristband and completion of screening process.
It also allows scanning the patient’s ID card through any shield like car window or something, minimizing the term of contact with the patient and increasing the speed of process.
The asset management software is also capable to track the process of screening and collection of transportation and the results, also scannable barcodes can be printed that can be used for several purposes of data entry and retrieval. All the data management tasks can be outsourced to Data Entry Outsourced.
RFID technology assists healthcare professionals to print and scan QR codes for equipment in need and shortfall, allowing them to be aware in place order in advance.
Staff Safety to Ensure Proper Service Delivery
All the healthcare employees including doctors, nurses, and caretakers are also assets to the hospital and protecting them is also a deep concern for the management. When there is a safe environment everybody works with ease of mental pressure and for the healthcare professionals it is important to be at peaceful mind state so that to deliver the quality of treatment to their patients.
Asset management solution provides the primary importance to your asset’s security and safety, thereby implements strict safety guidelines and measures this may include the tracking and maintenance of security alarms, CCTV, fire extinguisher and axe, fire alarms, water sprinkler, etc. this way all the employees, patients and their relatives will be secured.
With the increasing number of patients of COVID-19 every day, management of everyday operations within healthcare settings has become a challenging task. Also, some mobile assets cost a loss of millions of dollars annually due to underutilization. Here, RFID-based asset management solution helps to mitigate such losses and enables healthcare agencies to concentrate more on critical areas.
Moreover, pandemic has provided an opportunity to hospital asset management solution to augment the market shares. Asset Infinity has boosted its asset tracking and inventory management services by developing an efficient workflow to quickly locate and identify the status of critical medical equipment availability. For instance, the personal protective equipment (PPE) kits are required in abundance to ensure the safety of patients and healthcare workers.
Benefits of Asset management software to Healthcare industry:
- Asset Information on a fingertip:
Asset tracking allows to receive accurate information of equipment and assets in real-time. The staff will receive all the data on computer system as well as a mobile phone. So that, you can manage your asset efficiently and effectively.
- Track of Medication:
Medication is calculated under the consumables items that are utilized in a regular and everyday manner. Therefore, the medication and blood bank inventory need to be tracked regularly to avoid their expiration followed by resultant waste.
- Increased Visibility:
As a result of proper tracking and management of medical devices in a healthcare organization, the visibility of the equipment will increase to be found whenever in need. Therefore, the location of important equipment can be immediately tracked.
- Short Healthcare Workflow:
Automated management of the inventory, making their routines simpler, and reconciling of medical equipment make all the processes and workflows shorter such as screening nowadays, making it all easier and simpler.
Conclusion:
Healthcare asset management software is successfully maintaining accurate stock levels of supplies and equipment so that patients won’t suffer from neglected health services (undermanaged or unfound inventory).
RFID-based asset management solution assists hospitals to track many medicinal services, expanded security, effective operations, cost savings, etc. It ultimately improves quality patient care which is the most important consideration of the healthcare industry.