May 22, 2008 - GE Healthcare, through a collaboration with CenTrak Inc., today announced the availability of a new RFID technology capable of dividing a room or segmenting a bay by creating radio frequency identification (RFID) "virtual walls."
The technology was developed to meet the needs of healthcare providers to track tagged mobile medical equipment down to portion of a single room. This sub-room-level distinction in certain areas of the hospital provides an important enhancement to RFID room-level accuracy.
The Asset Optimization System gives hospitals the ability to accurately locate assets within a monitored area as small as 6 x 8 feet, which is the size of a typical small patient bay, whether curtained off or wide open.
"We were impressed with the technology advancement on two fronts," said Kenneth N. Sable, M.D., FACEP, director, division of informatics, emergency department, Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, NY. "The ability to create 'virtual walls' in the often wide open environment of the emergency department, will enable us to quickly and reliably locate both patients as well as life-saving equipment such as cardiac defibrillators and portable ultrasound machines. Additionally, this product is battery powered and requires no additional wiring, making it an extremely low maintenance solution."
The new RFID technology will be demonstrated by GE Healthcare and CenTrak at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Conference and Expo May 31 - June 2 in San Jose, CA.
For more information: www.gehealthcare.com, www.centrak.com
March 03, 2014 
