CARPS Benchmarking Opportunity
Donna Sundblom of Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital (SCGH) near Perth, Western Australia is keen to get in touch with other CARPS users to conduct a benchmarking exercise. CARPS is used at SCGH to manage a wide range of support services including porters, patient meals, general cleaning, linen and bed cleaning.
This could be a great opportunity to share CARPS performance management ideas and experiences directly with other users, as well as to get useful insight into performance comparative to other hospitals. Donna has already had a good response within Australia but we thought it would be useful to give UK hospitals the chance to be involved as well. Please let us know if you would like to find out more about this project and we will put you in touch with Donna and her team.
Website Revamp
As mentioned in the previous edition, we have been having a bit of work done on our website and are pleased to announce that it has now gone live! Our priority was to get the site responsive, so that it can be explored smoothly on any size screen or device. We hope that the new site is also cleaner looking, easier to navigate and does a better job of illustrating the products and services we offer. Please have a gander at the new site and let us know what you think by leaving some feedback via the contact page, we'd love to hear from you.
The re-design was done at a very reasonable rate by London based graphic design wizard, Eddie Green. By all means look him up if you are in the market for an online spruce-up.
Location, Location, Location
CARPS users already enjoy the benefit of knowing an operative’s most recent location, by virtue of the “from” and “to” locations on their task request. But in these days of technological miracles and wonders, we know that actual real-time location tracking would be ideal; allowing tasks to be dispatched to the most appropriately located personnel with greater assurance, while providing enhanced security and performance data. For this reason, we have been looking at possibilities for operative location tracking in CARPS for some time.
GPS tracking on smartphones may mean we spend much less time getting lost in unfamiliar places than we used to, but it is not much use indoors or in built up areas. Indoor location tracking via radio beacons has long been achievable but has been prohibitively expensive, with individual beacons typically coming in around the £200-£300 mark, and a fair number of them being required to cover a site such as a hospital campus effectively. The introduction of Apple’s iBeacon protocol however, has heralded a surge in manufacturers producing beacons that offer a good degree of accuracy at a much more affordable price, many coming in at under £30 per unit. Beacon technology is on the rise.
Beacons are not just for phones and tablets either. Motorola’s latest MOTOTRBO “e” (“e” for “Enhanced”) series of digital hand portable radios come with built in Bluetooth 4.0 transceivers that support the iBeacon protocol (more information in the "Radio" section below). iBeacon technology is still finding its feet but represents a world of possibilities, location and asset tracking being just the tip of the iceberg.
We are looking forward to unlocking the benefits of iBeacon technology for CARPS users on two-way radio and Android. Speak to us if you are interested in introducing indoor location tracking to your CARPS system.
Airsys Dealer Day
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A big thank you to our friends at Airsys for their 2016 Dealer day, a great chance for us to meet representatives from many of the big-hitters and innovators in radio communications and hear their latest news and plans. The event was held at the rather spectacular Eynsham Hall in The Cotswolds.
Motorola’s Rik Manzini outlined the benefits that can be expected from the new generation of MOTOTRBO “Enhanced” radios. As well as improved range, durability and battery life, the E series promises users better safety features, including a built in accelerometer enabling improved “Man Down” alerts based on angle and movement, improved positioning accuracy and reliability by supporting multiple satellite navigation standards (GPS and GLONASS) and integrated Bluetooth 4.0 for indoor location tracking. MOTOTRBO Enhanced radios are billed as “Future Ready”, boasting double the memory of their predecessors in terms of RAM and Flash storage, as well as incorporating integrated WiFi capabilities.
Tait’s Jamie Bishop announced an increased focus on addressing the needs of the UK market with a new range of low cost Tait products built on the brand’s heritage of reliability and excellence. Kenwood’s Mark Haynes and Stephen Edwards spoke along similar lines about increasing the Japanese giant’s portfolio with their low-tier DMR range, with a particular view to satisfying the needs of the Western European and UK markets.
Let us know if you want more information about the new MOTOTRBO Enhanced range or any other radio equipment.
Thanks for reading!
We hope you have enjoyed this edition of our newsletter, please get in touch if you have any feedback, comments or questions.
P.S. If you know anyone you think might like to receive this quarterly newsletter, please forward their name and email address to us. We will confirm their interest before adding them to the list.
Best wishes,
Tom Purcell
Purcell | Business Development