Affiliations: [a] Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Gazi University, Ankara, Turkey | [b] Department of Industrial Engineering, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Nilgun Fescioglu-Unver, Department of Industrial Engineering, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkey. Tel.: +90 312 292 4278; Fax: +90 312 292 4091; E-mail:nfunver@etu.edu.tr,nilgunf@gmail.com
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Each year, hospitals lose a considerable amount of time
and money due to misplaced mobile assets. In addition the assets which
remain in departments that frequently use them depreciate early, while other
assets of the same type in different departments are rarely used. A real
time locating system can prevent these losses when used with appropriate
asset sharing policies. OBJECTIVE: This research quantifies the amount of time a medium
size hospital saves by using real time locating system and proposes an asset
selection rule to eliminate the asset usage imbalance problem. METHODS: The asset selection rule proposed is based on multi
objective optimization techniques. The effectiveness of this rule on asset
to patient time and asset utilization rate variance performance measures
were tested using discrete event simulation method. RESULTS: Results show that the proposed asset selection rule
improved the usage balance significantly. Sensitivity analysis showed that
the proposed rule is robust to changes in demand rates and user preferences. CONCLUSIONS: Real time locating systems enable saving considerable
amount of time in hospitals, and they can still be improved by integrating
decision support mechanisms. Combining tracking technology and asset
selection rules helps improve healthcare services.
Keywords: Real time locating system, RTLS, healthcare asset management, hospital asset tracking
