Qolcom were selected by NHS England's Future Connectivity Programme to create a guidance for NHS organisations on how to leverage their existing network infrastructure to deploy Real Time Location Services (RTLS). 

Over time RTLS has become an umbrella term and had its definition expanded to include most IT location services technologies in use today. Applying RTLS to a large hospital site or campus can have an immediate and positive impact for clinical and clerical staff as well as patients and visitors.

Clinical staff can use RTLS to quickly locate important pieces of medical equipment such as IV Pumps, Heart Monitors and Wheelchairs. Clinical staff can look at the historical movement of beds and the workforce to design better, more efficient processes.

Patients and visitors can use way-finding applications to navigate around large hospital sites to attend appointments and locate utilities. Tracking of human beings either for workflow management analysis or patient tracking is mentioned as secondary applications of RTLS but is not the focus of this guidance. 

The NHS England Connectivity Hub provides expert technical insights to help the NHS plan and implement tailored connectivity solutions. As a recognised provider of networking managed services for healthcare organisations across the UK, Qolcom’s executive leadership team was proud to contribute to the whitepaper.