The ultrasound indoor positioning system (IPS) offers location accuracy and highly responsive customer support for the tracking and monitoring of patients or equipment. Sonitor wireless detectors are installed throughout an ED’s patient waiting areas, and upon registration, patients are given a Tag that monitors, tracks and locates their position in real time. The Tag is linked to the patients’ digital files, which contain their vital signs while they are in the waiting room.
The motion activated Tag transmits its unique identification signal using ultrasound waves. Unlike RFID, the technology is room specific. Detectors, using Sonitor’s patented Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms, transmit signals in digital format via the existing wireless LAN to a central computer unit.
The technology is part of the pilot, NIH-sponsored SMART (Scalable Medical Alert and Response Technology) ED patient tracking and monitoring project at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a collaborative effort by researchers there, as well as from Harvard Medical School, and from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
March 03, 2014 
