Tracking and Visualizing Hospital Equipment in a Web Based GIS

Abstract: The hospital in Gävle has been fined multiple times due to improper placement of hospital beds in the hallways; so far they have been fined 20 times for a total of 570 000kr (Löfving, 2013). A solution to this problem was requested by the hospital in the form of an indoor positioning system to track hospital equipment. Therefore, this study was performed and it was focused on three main research questions: How will tracking equipment indoor with the fingerprint method perform under different circumstances? (Moving between floors, running, walking, under a bed, hidden by electronic equipment etc.) How can the positions be visualized in a web-based GIS? What problems can be solved by visualizing the movement of equipment in a GIS? The research questions were answered by performing studies on previous research in the fields of Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) and visualization techniques. To test how the system performs a case study was performed in a testing environment on floors 7 and 8 of building 38 of Gävle Hospital. The data collected in the case study was then used to simulate moving hospital beds and from there create visualizations based on the research on previous studies.   Because the hospital wanted the system to use the already existing infrastructure of the building an IPS was found that use the already existing Wi-Fi network. By combining this positioning system with the web-based Geographic Information System (GIS) called CRISP a powerful analysis tool emerged that not only had the ability to track equipment but also perform analysis of statistics for workflow and the movement of the equipment, among others. The precision of 3 m was found to be on par with other positioning systems using Wi-Fi. This gives the system described and tested in this thesis great potential to expand in to other fields, where there is need for high accuracy combined with a powerful analysis tool to help make the business as efficient as possible.