Sutter hospital upgrades RFID infant tracker

Medical equipment gets lost within cavernous hospital buildings and, occasionally, so do patients, especially the smallest ones. A California hospital is beefing up security for infant patients by upgrading an RFID security system meant to prevent abductions of newborn babies.

Sutter Tracy Community Hospital in Tracy, Calif., has installed version 6.0 of the Safe Place Infant and Pediatric Security Solution, an RFID tracking system from Brookfield, Wis.-based RF Technologies. The new version, which for the first time includes support for touch-screen technology, sounds an alarm and locks down maternity and neonatal areas should a baby be moved without authorization or a transmitter tag be tampered with. Hospital staff can monitor activity remotely.

"We choose to stay with something that has been good for us all along. It is very reliable," Joanne Slayter, the hospital's manager of maternal and child-care services, says in an RF Technologies press release. When new technology is available, we like to incorporate it. That is why we decided to upgrade at this time. We especially like the touch-screen capability. Safe Place is one of the many layers of infant protection we use in protecting our newborns."

Sutter Tracy Community Hospital delivers about 775 babies annually.

For more:
- view this Mobile Health Watch blog post
- see this RF Technologies press release

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