The RTLS market develops at an extraordinary pace. Each week we hear new announcements from the RTLS hardware vendors about their newest, better, faster, cheaper, smaller tags, or improved means of location triangulation, or even entirely new approaches to tracking assets and people. It’s safe to say that the “hardware” aspect of RTLS is constantly changing and constantly evolving, whether from innovation, acquisition, pricing, business models, intellectual property issues, etc.
The best way to take advantage of this change (or, perhaps, to mitigate the potential risks of this change) is to leverage an enterprise RTLS software solution that works with any RTLS hardware. The InSites RTLS software solution is integrated with multiple RTLS hardware technologies, including Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi plus infrared, Wi-Fi plus ultrasound, active RFID, infrared/RF, passive RFID, ultrasound, and ZigBee.
Just in the last few months we have expanded the portfolio of RTLS hardware that works with our enterprise healthcare RTLS software, including:
- a hybrid RFID and ultrasound technology from TempSys,
- an active RFID-based solution from Cadi Scientific,
- an active RFID-based solution from RF Code,
- passive RFID technology from ThingMagic,
- and a real-time location technology based on the IEEE ZigBee standard 802.15.4 from Proxense.
These are in addition to our existing integrations with RTLS hardware from vendors such as Aeroscout, Awarepoint, CenTrak, Ekahau, Sonitor, and Versus.
Our open RTLS software solution represents a unique value proposition for hospitals planning to invest in RTLS technology: a single RTLS software solution that works with multiple real-time locating technologies. This enables hospitals to select the RTLS technology that best meets their current requirements, infrastructure, and budget, while providing a future-proof foundation for additional use cases, technologies, innovations, and requirements over time.
Thus, as new and better hardware solutions emerge, you can switch your underlying RTLS technology without impacting your users, your work flows, and your many years’ worth of RTLS data and “business intelligence” capabilities. Here’s an analogy I heard recently on this subject: every time you upgrade your laptop to get the latest PC hardware, you shouldn’t have to lose your files or learn an entirely new spreadsheet program!
So if you want to make a smart investment in RTLS, start by choosing the RTLS solution that can work with each and every RTLS hardware.
And, if you would like to discuss our objective experiences on how each RTLS hardware technology might match up with your specific use cases, please let us know!
Sincerely,
Marcus Ruark, Vice President
Intelligent InSites
P.S. We’ll be at HIMSS 2012 next week, so come visit us in either the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion or our own booth #12217 (both located in the lower level hall G). I hope to see you there!
