Norway Hospital saves $6 million with RFID-based uniform tracking
According to the RAND report on RFID in health care, St. Olavs Hospital in Trondheim Norway saved about $40 million kroner, or USD 6 million in space savings alone by tracking hospital scrubs with RFID-embedded tags. The case study is dated 2007 so it would be interesting to see what the savings amount to now including both the space and labor costs.
With sewn-in passive 13.56 MHz RFID tags, the hospital gained real time inventory visibility of its uniforms — saving both space and labor costs. The system uses RFID readers in inventory closets and soiled garment bins system to automatically update inventory software. This resulted in a 90% space savings from the previous system the hospital had in place.
The system tracks over 130,000 garments for more than 7500 employees across a large space, according to Texas Instruments, who provided the tags.
For more information about this case study, check out the RAND report or Texas Instruments more detailed account of the RFID-tracking trial at St. Olavs.
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Tags: hospital garment tracking, rfid case study, rfid in health care, rtls healthcare