Value analysis of healthcare real-time asset tracking systems and asset selection algorithm

Hospitals face financial losses due to mobile asset searchs and unbalanced asset utilizations which cause early depreciation of the assets. Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) decrease hospitals? equipment search time however hospitals abstain from investing in these technologies because they are not sure how much value will they gain by using this technology. In the literature, studies on analyzing value of RFID based real time location systems use limited amount of real data and cover a limited number of departments in hospitals. In addition, there are no studies on value contribution of an RTLS integrated decision support system in healthcare. The study presented in this thesis takes TOBB University of Economics and Technology Hospital as the case model. In this study, we developed models which represent hospital?s current situation, with RTLS integration, and with decision support system integrated RTLS. The decision support system proposed, balances asset utilization and distance while considering asset request?s urgency. Sensitivity analysis showed that the proposed algorithm behaves robust with different number of assets and demand levels. System comparisons showed that the algorithm?s performance is high. This study revealed that RFID integration improves system efficiency and reduces losses.