The Story of Digital Transformation at Baby Memorial Hospital, Kozhikode

Significant time for medical professionals, especially the nursing staff goes in chasing the support staff for movement of patients and mobilizing the medical equipment. Besides having adverse impact on customer satisfaction, delays in in-hospital Equipment Handling may at times be fatal to the patients. Often there are no systems or mechanisms to raise these requests and track the fulfilment.

The situation was no different at Baby Memorial Hospital (BMH). The technology team at BMH took this as a challenge and implemented a simple and cost-effective solution.

Using Bluetooth Low Energy beacon sensors attached to the equipment, the team developed a real-time location monitoring system to track all the equipment. Similar to the apps used by cab aggregators and food delivery companies, nurses can now request for an equipment using a smart phone. The in-hospital handling staff gets a notification request. The system shows the nearest equipment and assigns it to the request. The nursing staff can monitor the movement of the equipment till it reaches its intended destination. Once the delivery is done the handling team confirms the fulfilment status using the smart phone provided to them.

As per Dr. Anju Mirian Alex, the COO of BMH, “The real-time location system has significantly improved the transportation system. The nurses are happy that their requests are serviced quickly. The access to real-time demand data has enabled me to optimise manpower allocation throughout the hospital.”