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A Survey About Real-Time Location Systems in Healthcare Environments

  • Mobile & Wireless Health
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Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Every year healthcare organizations suffer from several issues, such as unapropriated workflow, thousands of deaths caused by medical errors, counterfeit drugs, and increasing costs. To offer better patient care and increase profit, hospitals could adopt solutions that help remedy these problems. Real-Time Location Systems have the potential to deal with many of these issues, as well as offering means for developing new and intelligent solutions. This kind of system enables tracking assets and people, allowing several improvements. Even though the benefits of such solutions are well known and desired by healthcare providers, their large scale adoption is still distant. In this article, we surveyed Real-Time Location Systems usage in hospitals. While developing this survey, we observed a need for organizing important aspects of healthcare-oriented Real-Time Location Systems. Therefore, we analyzed challenges regarding this topic and a taxonomy proposed. This survey offers researchers and developers ways to comprehend the challenges surrounding this area while proposing a classification of aspects that a Real-Time Location System for healthcare environments must assess for it to be successful.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Innovation Laboratory - SOFTWARELAB, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Computação Aplicada, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Av Unisinos, 950, São Leopoldo, RS, 93022-750, Brazil

    Rodrigo Bazo, Cristiano André da Costa, Lucas Adams Seewald, Luiz Gonzaga da Silveira Jr., Rodolfo Stoffel Antunes, Rodrigo da Rosa Righi & Vinicius Facco Rodrigues

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  1. Rodrigo Bazo
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  2. Cristiano André da Costa
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  3. Lucas Adams Seewald
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  4. Luiz Gonzaga da Silveira Jr.
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  5. Rodolfo Stoffel Antunes
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  6. Rodrigo da Rosa Righi
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Correspondence to Cristiano André da Costa.

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Bazo, R., da Costa, C.A., Seewald, L.A. et al. A Survey About Real-Time Location Systems in Healthcare Environments. J Med Syst 45, 35 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-021-01710-1

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