Smart Cabinets

This techno twist to product tracking may help your heart.

Whether you're taking stock of your pantry or you're a big-box retailer tracking thousands of merchandise items, inventory management is essential for helping ensure that you're prepared. In some cases, it can be as simple as tick marks on a notepad. But when you're preparing to provide lifesaving treatment, that system just won't cut it.

In fact, at THE HEART HOSPITAL Baylor Plano on the campus of Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano, a new, wireless product tracking system called RFID—the first of its kind in the Dallas-Fort Worth area—is quietly making noise. RFID stands for radio frequency identification network. The "network" consists of 10 high-tech storage cabinets in The Heart Hospital that hold items such as cardiac stents, pacemakers and implantable cardiac defibrillators. The cabinets basically automate the tracking, billing and ordering of these high-dollar items.

Here's how it works:
A nurse or technician accesses a cabinet with his or her hospital badge, retrieves an item and "links" it to the appropriate patient—an easy process since RFID is connected to the hospital's patient database. "In other words, the cabinets 'know' who is in the hospital," says Brad Morgan, The Heart Hospital's director of materiel management.

Immediately after the cabinet is closed, a scanner updates inventory. "It's like your refrigerator knowing when you take milk out as soon as you close the door," says Mark Valentine, president of The Heart Hospital. Unlike your refrigerator, however, this system automatically reorders products and prevents expired products from being used.

RFID might not save your life. Then again, it might. Take for example, a potential manufacturer pacemaker recall. "The old way, we'd be pulling a lot of paperwork and spending time researching where all the recalled pacemakers went. RFID allows us to identify in seconds every patient who received that product," Morgan says.

The system promises other intangibles too. Patients will be billed for products used only in their care. If one cabinet is empty of a needed device in an emergency, it quickly identifies another cabinet where the item is stocked. And, instead of ordering supplies or doing data entry, nurses can spend more time, well, nursing.

"It keeps very experienced medical professionals at the bedside treating patients instead of tracking supplies," Valentine says. With a hint of pride in his voice, he adds, "That's why I call them 'smart cabinets.'"

At the very least, they're a smart idea. And, if they prove to be as successful as they are smart, they could be found throughout Baylor Health Care System soon.

By Laurie Davies

For a referral to a cardiologist on the medical staff at a Baylor hospital near you, please call 1-800-4BAYLOR or use our on-line physician directory.