Efficiently tracking medical equipment in hospitals is crucial for ensuring quality patient care and reducing costs. AI-powered location intelligence is revolutionizing this process by providing real-time tracking, improving staff safety, and eliminating the inefficiencies of traditional methods.
Expert Perspectives: Adrian Jennings
Why is understanding the location of equipment so critical to hospitals?
For nurses and physicians to provide the highest quality of care, they shouldn’t have to worry about the availability of clean equipment. Unfortunately, the fast-paced and chaotic nature of hospitals means that clean equipment isn’t always where it should be. Nurses spend excessive time looking for equipment—or, in some cases—hoard items needed to do their jobs. It’s common for hospitals to buy more equipment than needed so they have extra on hand at all times–eating into their bottom lines.
While these tactics are understandable, they’re not economical, nor do they let nurses focus on what they do best. Technology, like LocationAI, can keep track of mobile medical equipment (MME) in real time. It works by reading the location of small sensors or tags attached to the equipment that transmit data to the cloud. Not only does it indicate the exact location of clean equipment once it has gone missing, but it can also alert personnel when the stock of clean equipment is getting low, ensuring staff never run out in the first place.
Why is keeping track of equipment particularly challenging?
The typical hospital environment is constantly in motion. Patients and nurses move from room to room, and the MME needed to care for them can change location for several reasons. It may go with a patient to the operating room or go to be cleaned. It is not uncommon for MME to be inadvertently thrown out in the trash or for it to go home with a patient upon discharge (either intentionally or unintentionally).
Furthermore, hospitals are difficult environments for technology to function seamlessly. For example, MRIs and X-ray machines can interfere with connectivity technology. Unlike a typical office or home environment, the walls are filled with pipes and wires, making complicated installations unfeasible. Hospitals also operate in a unique compliance and regulatory environment that can result in fines if they don’t meet specified requirements.
Hospitals have faced a difficult choice between cost and accuracy when selecting a location intelligence solution. Historically the options have been more accurate solutions like ultrasound and/or infrared that are higher-cost and more disruptive (meaning they require more extensive installation that shuts down rooms and hallways), or less reliable solutions powered by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (which tend to be lower-cost and less disruptive).
How are hospitals using AI to address these challenges?
The integration of AI turns the table on the tradeoff between cost and accuracy. A new breed of solutions uses AI to provide high accuracy at a low cost. Similar to how image-recognition algorithms get trained to recognize specific images, AI is trained to recognize rooms and transmit that information to the cloud through a proprietary system that bypasses Wi-Fi. Advanced software makes sense of the information to pinpoint the exact location of tracked items in real time. Likewise, the lightweight infrastructure cuts costs and eliminates the drawback of putting patient rooms or hallways out of order during installation. This means that a hospital can achieve in-room location accuracy without placing equipment in each room. That’s simply not possible without AI.
But it’s not just about the location of assets. AI can also support the location of people and is being used with staff duress solutions to improve employee safety.
You mentioned employee safety, how can AI be used to protect hospital staff?
Traditional staff duress systems–whether panic buttons mounted on a wall behind a patient bed or other early IoT solutions–offer limited coverage and only pinpoint the origin of a problem rather than tracking its progression. Newer offerings, like Cognosos Protect, leverage experience tracking assets in hospitals and use smart AI engines to make them easier to use and more accurate and comprehensive in their coverage.
The minimal form factor of the wearable button is designed to be activated in a way that is hard for the attacker to see and keeps locating the badge throughout the incident. Unlike traditional offerings, AI-enabled infrastructure enables hospitals to cover outdoor areas and parking garages so staff is protected from the moment they park to the moment they leave. These solutions also have privacy built in only to locate people when they push the button (instead of continually tracking like many solutions do).
What are some of the more innovative benefits of AI-enabled location intelligence?
The software layer of these solutions will evolve rapidly as more and more hospitals adopt it. For example, AI-enabled staff duress software can currently be customized and integrated seamlessly with existing security and communication systems. This can inform response workflows and coordinate with responders in real time. Over time, forensic reporting with historical event insights can enable hospitals to continuously improve response times and process efficiency. As more and more regulation is rolled out to protect employees, this will help strengthen compliance efforts with new standards and help hospitals avoid fees or penalties.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg for what location intelligence can accomplish. These capabilities are already available now, so it will be exciting to see the new ways AI will help hospitals provide better care, save money and keep employees safe and happy.
Adrian Jennings, Chief Product Officer for Cognosos

Adrian Jennings serves as Chief Product Officer for Cognosos. Always looking for the simplest paths through complex change, Adrian leads the company’s product vision, strategy, roadmap, new feature development and commercialization across the various industries Cognosos serves. As one of the pioneers who helped define RTLS as it is known today, Adrian brings over 20 years of experience building, launching and growing successful and advanced technical product portfolios. Prior to Cognosos, Adrian worked for Ubisense as VP of Industry Strategy followed by VP of RTLS. In those roles he served as a consultant to the sales team and customers to help define digital transformation strategies and drove go-to-market strategies for the company’s latest products. Earlier in his career, Adrian served as a rocket scientist at Her Britannic Majesty’s Ministry of Defense, UK. He holds a MA in Physics from the University of Oxford.
About Cognosos

Cognosos is paving the way for the next generation of real-time location systems (RTLS). Supporting the biggest brands in industries like healthcare, automotive, logistics and manufacturing. Cognosos’ cloud-based software, and ultra-lightweight footprint delivers an unparalleled combination of price and performance, reducing time-to-value, increasing ROI and eliminating the traditional deployment barriers of legacy systems. For more information, visit us at cognosos.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn @Cognosos.
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