Testing a proximity-based location tracking system with Bluetooth Low Energy tags for future use in the OR

摘要

Location tracking systems have become popular in recent years and have been in use in many areas such as logistics, transportation and medicine. In healthcare, various companies have been offering real time location system solutions to hospitals with great success. These systems are used for asset management, workflow improvement as well as patient and staff tracking. For test runs we decided on a low-cost location tracking system based on proximity detection and the technology Bluetooth Low Energy. The system was developed for the use in OR environments which comes with specific requirements. The goal of this work is to evaluate if people with Bluetooth Low Energy tags are reliably tracked and detected. These tests were conducted in the first stages of a development phase to see, how the tracking system behaved in a controlled office environment. Problems such as the inactivity of the tag and random changes into other nearby rooms because of multipath effects arise and are discussed.