In the fast-paced world of healthcare, managing resources effectively is paramount to providing quality patient care, ensuring staff productivity, and maintaining a smooth operation. However, medical offices and hospitals today face significant challenges in resource management, leading to frustrated staff, longer patient wait times, and operational bottlenecks.
The Problem: A Tangled Web of Equipment and Room Challenges
Healthcare resources include critical assets like equipment, physical spaces, and the valuable time of healthcare workers. The complexity lies in keeping track of the status and availability of these resources in real-time.
One major hurdle is managing critical healthcare equipment. Resources can include items like Workstations on Wheels (WOW) carts, medical equipment (MRI, X-Ray, Lab equipment, OCT devices, etc.), and physical spaces (Examination rooms, Operating rooms, ER Bays, etc.). Modern medical devices, like a WOW cart, are often complex and prone to failure. When equipment malfunctions, staff frequently lacks the time to troubleshoot or even simply alert operations to the issue. They may not be able to identify what equipment has issues, and operations teams often have no easy way to identify problem resources across the facility. Furthermore, different resources can have unique service teams and requirements, adding another layer of complexity.
Managing physical spaces, such as examination rooms, operating rooms, and ER bays, presents its own set of challenges. The status and availability of these rooms are constantly fluid. This fluidity means staff often doesn’t know where they need to go next, leading to wasted time searching for an available space. Similarly, operations staff, like technicians or cleaning crews, don’t know if they can safely enter a room to perform service or repairs without disturbing a patient or staff member.
The Impact: Wasted Time and Frustration
These inefficiencies have a direct impact on the daily operations and overall experience within a healthcare facility. Staff waste valuable time searching for available equipment and rooms, reducing the time they could be spending on patient care. This leads to frustration for both staff and patients due to delays and inefficiencies. Ultimately, these challenges contribute to inefficient resource allocation, impacting both healthcare worker productivity and patient satisfaction.
The Solution: Enter On Air’s L-UX Platform
Addressing these critical resource management problems is essential for healthcare facilities looking to optimize their operations and improve the experience for everyone involved. On Air’s AI-driven IoT solution, the L-UX platform, is designed specifically to tackle these challenges.
The L-UX platform leverages AI-enabled IoT lights (referred to as L-UX Discs or lights) and a Centralized Management App (the L-UX LiveOps App) to provide real-time visibility and streamline workflows.
- AI-powered IoT Lights (L-UX Discs): These intuitive devices can be attached to various resources, like a WOW cart or mounted near a room’s entrance. They communicate the status and availability of the resource using a configurable light color and pattern. For example, a light on a WOW cart could be Red to signal “Do not use” if it’s broken, Yellow if it has an issue but is still functional, or Green when it’s working properly. A light outside an exam room could indicate if the room is Available (Green), Unavailable (Red Solid), or if a procedure is in progress (Yellow). This allows staff to see the status and availability from a distance.
- Intuitive Button Interaction: The L-UX Discs have an intuitive button design for quick, bi-directional feedback. With one button push, staff can signal that a device, like a WOW cart, needs service and indicate the severity of the issue. This triggers a message to the asset management system to create a service ticket automatically.
- The L-UX LiveOps App: The L-UX App serves as the central hub for managing and monitoring the system. It provides real-time status updates for all resources. Technicians can see resources with issues without needing phone calls or tablets, and the app offers service ticket management, including automatic creation, updates, and closure. The app also includes an “Ask L-UX” AI Assistant to help staff with troubleshooting, documentation, videos, and provide guidance. Furthermore, the app allows for admin control over system configuration, user management, and data visualization.
By connecting these IoT devices to existing management systems, such as Asset Maintenance and Patient Management systems, the L-UX platform streamlines workflows and enables better coordination. The platform’s AI also supports predictive and preventative maintenance through the L-UX App, analyzing equipment history to anticipate potential issues.
Conclusion
On Air’s L-UX platform directly addresses the pain points of managing critical healthcare resources like WOW carts and patient rooms. By providing real-time visual status through the L-UX Discs and enabling streamlined management via the L-UX App, the system helps staff find the resources they need faster, allows operations and maintenance teams to work more efficiently, and ultimately leads to increased staff productivity and enhanced patient satisfaction by reducing delays and improving resource utilization.
On Air is launching L-UX in 2025 with pilot programs being scheduled in medical offices in Orange County, California, and they are actively seeking hospitals interested in piloting the system as well. This innovative combination of AI, IoT, and intuitive design is set to revolutionize healthcare resource management.