Belgium GZA Hospital Group implements AeroScout's Temperature Monitoring solution

AeroScout, the leading provider of Unified Asset Visibility for the healthcare industry, today announced that the GasthuisZusters Antwerpen (GZA) Hospital Group in Belgium has implemented AeroScout's Temperature Monitoring solution across its three hospitals. GZA Hospital Group is using the Wi-Fi RFID solution to monitor and manage the temperature in refrigerators that contain critical items, such as pharmaceuticals and blood. The project represents one of the largest Wi-Fi temperature monitoring deployments in Europe and delivers quality of care and regulatory compliance benefits to GZA Hospital Group.

“GZA Hospital Group is a good example of how healthcare organizations use AeroScout's Wi-Fi RTLS solutions to help improve efficiency, facilitate regulatory compliance and enhance quality of care.”

The solution was deployed by PHI DATA, a Brussels-based solutions integrator operating in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, with expertise in automatic identification, data collection, localization and monitoring. For the GZA Hospital Group implementation, the AeroScout Temperature Monitoring solution leveraged the healthcare organization's existing Aruba wireless infrastructure.

"We examined several options before selecting PHI DATA and AeroScout," explains Achiel Lejon, Manager of Maintenance and Repair at GZA Hospital Group. "Quality control is of paramount importance, and we need strict controls with respect to temperature. We chose AeroScout Temperature Monitoring because it is a flexible and reliable solution capable of meeting our regulatory compliance requirements and, at the same time, can streamline our staff's administrative work."

GZA Hospital Group is located in the Antwerp region of Belgium and has three hospitals and more than 1,000 beds. Its campuses, Sint-Augustinus, Sint-Jozef and Sint-Vincentius, are responsible for approximately 25% of the care in the region. The hospital group has a reputation as a premier provider of healthcare services and an advanced user of technology to improve operations, efficiency and care.

During the rollout, PHI DATA mounted small AeroScout Wi-Fi Tags in refrigerators containing temperature-sensitive items such as medicine, blood and food. The team implemented AeroScout's Temperature Monitoring solution by leveraging GZA Hospital Group's existing Aruba WLAN infrastructure - avoiding the need to deploy and maintain a separate sensor network. The end-user software, AeroScout MobileView, was configured to automatically monitor refrigerators and send alerts if temperatures deviate from specified ranges to prevent spoilage of items and help ensure quality of care.

"One of the advantages of the solution is that it is part of a larger, robust set of healthcare applications, so it provides a framework on which we can continue to build," says Jan De Sitter, Information and Communication Technology Manager at GZA Hospital Group. "Since AeroScout solutions use our existing Wi-Fi network, we will be able to add applications such as Staff Safety and Asset Tracking with minimal infrastructure costs."

"We are proud of the results that GZA Hospital Group and PHI DATA have accomplished with our RTLS applications," says Wim Verduyn, Director of Benelux and France at AeroScout. "GZA Hospital Group is a good example of how healthcare organizations use AeroScout's Wi-Fi RTLS solutions to help improve efficiency, facilitate regulatory compliance and enhance quality of care."