Prasanna Kulkarni, founder and product architect at Comparesoft, explores how the NHS is deploying asset management strategies designed to optimise the use of facilities, responsibly treat medical waste, enhance medical equipment management and improve patient care
Asset management technologies are helping healthcare organisations to track and trace individual items of equipment
Asset management is typically a more -common topic for asset-intensive industries.
Asset management is a highly-systematic, cost-effective process for acquiring, planning, deploying, maintaining, operating, and disposing of the physical assets of the healthcare organisation
However, in recent years the healthcare industry, including the NHS, has adopted it to become more effective.
Recently,the NHS has even published an asset management Good Practice Guide that any healthcare organisation can use to improve their services.
And the trend is not only prevalent in the public sector. It is also being seen among private healthcare operators like BMI, Bupa and other leading organisations, who are adopting efficient asset and inventory management practices.
But why is asset management gaining popularity in hospitals?
In a hospital setting, asset management, or enterprise asset management (EAM), can be described as a highly-systematic, cost-effective process for acquiring, planning, deploying, maintaining, operating, and disposing of the physical assets of the healthcare organisation.
What asset management really does is to provide a healthcare facility with an asset registry to track and manage its inventory. This helps to reduce costs and improve patient care and operational efficiencies.
An asset management programme for the healthcare industry typically includes:
From patient care items like beds and chairs, to operating inventory like blood-pressure checkers; it is imperative to know the location of each piece of equipment or item
An example of where asset management improvements have paid dividends is at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust which recently invested in RFID technology to track 32,500 assets.
The hospital now has an on-demand view of each piece of medical equipment in its facilities.
And the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital is using asset tracking and management technologies to track 1,309 pieces of medical equipment, including 849 beds.
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