Tracking various equipments in time in a healthcare center can often be the difference between life and death. Large healthcare centers often struggle to find the equipment when they are needed the most. Looking to provide a solution to this problem Ohio State University (OSU) Medical Center has selected the Ekahau RTLS solution for its location tracking application.

Ekahau (News - Alert) RTLS can operate over any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network while offering sub room-, room-, floor- and building-level accuracy. As a Wi-Fi standards-based  software solution, Ekahau RTLS requires no readers, new cabling, choke-points or exciters.

Looking to leverage system-wide, medical-grade Wi-Fi network from Cisco Systems (News - Alert) Inc, OSU Medical Center's IT department evaluated a select few Wi-Fi-based RTLS solutions in mid 2009. OSU Medical Center has deployed approximately 3,000 WI-Fi access points and 30 network controllers as part of a mission to unwire their entire campus. The medical center believes that Ekahau provides superior location accuracy and ability to monitor location of assets across multiple buildings on campus and at far-flung satellite locations.

“The large, widespread OSU Medical Center campus is a perfect place to showcase the strengths of Ekahau RTLS,' said Tuomo Rutanen, senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing and Business Development for Ekahau, in a release. “Our Wi-Fi, standards-based solution makes it easy to deploy location tracking applications campuswide within a matter of weeks, and eliminates all the hidden costs and delays related to other systems that require additional hardware.”

Initially, OSU Medical Center will start tracking various clinical assets, such as compression devices, IV pumps and isolation carts among other things. The hospital then will subsequently deploy additional Ekahau tags on variety of mobile medical equipment.

In October last year, the company introduced new wristband tag (News - Alert), the T301W that helps in finding precise location of people. The T301W tag sports a small size offering a comfortable fit. It uses a customer's Wi-Fi network for locating, using its two-way communications capabilities inherent to Wi-Fi. T301W works with a programmable push button by sending a pre-determined message to the RTLS system.