WKK Heide hospital uses Ekahau technology to assure staff safety, track available wheelchairs

Ekahau Inc., the world's leading provider of high-performance Wi-Fi based real-time locating systems (RTLS) and tools, announced today that German hospital Westküstenklinikum Heide (WKK) is using Ekahau technology to assure the safety of its psychiatric- and night-duty staff, and to track the locations of wheelchairs. WKK Heide ranks among northern Germany's largest and most modern clinics with a total capacity of 800 beds and a staff of approximately 2,200 individuals.

Ekahau's T301BD pager badges are worn by psychiatric and night-duty staff, who can use their badges to trigger an alarm in an emergency situation. When an alarm is sent, the Ekahau Wi-Fi badges use the hospital's existing WLAN network to identify both the sender's identity and the sender's exact location.

In addition, Ekahau's T301 asset tags are used for logistics management to locate available wheelchairs throughout the vast WKK Heide hospital. "We repeatedly experienced shortages of urgently needed wheelchairs, so we sought a simple solution to the problem," says Humayaun Kabir, CIO of the WKK Heide. Ekahau's tags convinced us because they're easy to integrate into our Wi-Fi network, and now we always know exactly where critical assets are located." The Ekahau tags automatically send a signal whenever a wheelchair leaves its assigned territory-so that it can be retrieved immediately -- and hospital personnel can also analyze historical usage patterns so that assets can be deployed where they are typically needed most.

"Our Ekahau badges and tags provide the WKK Heide with an efficient security and locating system," explains Dirk Lenz, Regional Director Central and Eastern Europe at Ekahau. "This hospital is a very modern facility and its administrators are always interested in new possibilities for optimizing safety and resources. We're pleased that our technology is contributing toward improving the hospital's operations."

Source: Ekahau Inc.