Design, development and evaluation of an asset tracking system

The master's thesis project focused on the design and development of a mobile asset tracking system to improve the current medical equipment maintenance practice at Hartford hospital. The thesis presented the capability of a mobile device, for example a handheld, to continuously, and in real-time determine the position of valuable medical equipment from a distance within a physical space via wireless technologies currently available. Additionally, the asset-tracking module on the handheld allowed technicians to have pertinent information regarding the equipment such as account number, location code and preventive maintenance (PM) history. The asset tracking module communicated indirectly with the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to allow technicians to pull-up work orders from the central data repository (WOSYST/spl reg/) database and have them available while carrying out repairs on medical equipment on the floors. Based on the asset-tracking prototype developed, an evaluation and return on investment (ROI) was carried out to determine the feasibility of installing a hospital-wide asset tracking system. The ROI examined variables such as budgetary pressures, CMI, space constraints and wireless interference to achieve cost benefits such as savings or expense prevention and improvements in qualitative measures.