As part of the BedWatch product line, Equipment Control is the latest innovation designed to empower clinical and support service teams by providing unprecedented visibility into the status and usage of healthcare equipment.

From advanced robotics used for room sterilization and floor cleaning to critical care equipment and specialty beds, Equipment Control helps ensure that all assets are effectively managed throughout their lifecycle.

With customizable equipment states, such as "in use," "dirty," "retired," "in need of repair," and "in service," each piece of equipment is tracked in real-time. The system logs every update, providing teams with instant access to critical information. Equipment Control seamlessly integrates with the BedWatch Service Control, Bed Control, and Admit Control modules to provide real-time visibility of certain equipment usage within InPatient areas, creating a unified view across clinical and service processes.

The BedWatch platform, featuring both Equipment Control and Service Control, offers a robust logistics solution for healthcare environments, enabling a level of automation and visibility that has been previously unavailable. This powerful combination ties together clinical workflows with service team activities, optimizing resource usage and minimizing downtime.

Use Case & Benefit Highlights:

• Robotics Management: Track the usage and location of sterilization robots, particularly following the discharge of patients under isolation precautions. For example, when a patient with CDIFF is discharged, a sterilization robot, such as a UV or Hydrogen Peroxide Fogger, can be deployed to thoroughly disinfect the room. This helps reduce Hospital Acquired Infection (HAI) rates, and robust reporting around these activities can significantly support Infection Prevention (IP) efforts.

  
  

• Specialty Bed Tracking: For hospitals renting high-cost specialty beds, Equipment Control ensures that these beds are used efficiently. The system helps hospitals determine when to bring in more beds or return those no longer needed, reducing unnecessary rental expenses and optimizing the use of expensive resources.

  
  

• Human-Robot Integration: Create a seamless connection between human processes and robotic automation, ensuring that equipment status changes, such as “needs cleaning” or “ready for use,” trigger immediate human intervention when necessary.

  
  

• Data & Utilization Reporting - Get data to understand how often specific pieces of equipment are used along with metadata around who, what, when, and where.

  
  

• Improve HAI - By incorporating triggers, via BedWatch’s workflow engine, a task can be automatically created to deploy a sterilization robot when a patient with an isolation condition is discharged to ensure consistency of usage where appropriate and high-visibility for clinicians. 

  
  

• Cost Savings - by tracking specialty/rental beds and determining the optimal time to adjust bed inventory to avoid unnecessary expenses.  In addition, by understanding equipment usage patterns through real-time visibility and reporting internal process improvement efforts can be significantly enhanced to ensure efficient / appropriate use of assets.

  
  

With BedWatch’s Equipment Control, healthcare facilities can achieve higher efficiency, streamline equipment-related processes, and better integrate human and robotic workflows—all contributing to an enhanced patient care experience.