A system to track moveable medical equipment in Forth Valley Royal Hospital has been featured as a success story in the Clinical Services Journal. Problems locating certain items which had been ‘borrowed’ or tucked away in cupboards have been solved by the head of Medical Physics Bryan Hynd, and his team of 14 staff who are responsible for managing all 14,000 devices. This includes buying new equipment, carrying out planned maintenance and repairing faults.
Initially 1,000 medical devices were fitted with radio frequency identification tags and five fixed readers were installed in key areas of the hospital. In addition, eight hand-held mobile readers are used by the medical physics team when auditing wards. The benefits being experienced in finding ‘lost’ equipment have allowed Bryan to justify further investment and rapidly expand the system.
