Pervasive Tracking for Time-Dependent Acute Patient Flow: A Case Study in Trauma Management

Abstract

The problem of tracking has gained a central role in healthcare research since it enables the acquisition of the information needed for improving healthcare management and efficiency, alongside patient safety. In literature, it is mainly discussed as an allocation problem that must deal with limited resources (rooms, physicians, equipment) to optimise workflows, and Real-Time Location Systems have been introduced with the main goal of locating and identifying assets and personnel in a healthcare facility. In this paper, we propose a novel perspective of pervasive tracking into Hospital 4.0, devised explicitly for time-dependent acute patient flow. The goal is to develop a tracking system that acquires not only the time and location of entities, exploiting state-of-the-art techniques, but also the main clinical events occurred. As an example application we describe TraumaTracker, a system developed to support the accurate and complete documentation of trauma resuscitation processes from pre-hospital care.