Ekahau and ICEGEIN Deliver Outpatient Tracking Application to Indian Hospital

Apollo Hospital Chennai Utilizes RTLS to Optimize Use of Hospital Resources and Minimize Patient Wait Times

RESTON, VA, June 1 /CNW/ - Ekahau Inc. (http://www.ekahau.com/), the worldwide high performance leader of Wi-Fi-based Real Time Location Systems (http://www.ekahau.com/products/real-time-location-system/overview.html) (RTLS), has teamed with India's Leading systems integrator ICEGEIN to deploy Ekahau RTLS at Apollo Hospital Chennai. The hospital will use the Ekahau solution to track patients who are having various tests done as part of their annual check-up, in order to better utilize hospital resources and shorten patient wait times.

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Each day Apollo Hospital Chennai offers annual comprehensive health checks for 200 patients, which require them to visit a number of departments - such as cardiology, imaging and the lab. Because these patients move from one place to another frequently during the process, it is hard to monitor which department is busy and which one has no wait, or whether a patient is in the right place at the right time.

Using the Ekahau RTLS solution, Apollo Hospital Chennai will provide each patient with an Ekahau T301B badge tag that will track their movement within the hospital, as well as their current location and time there, enabling administrators to identify in real-time where wait times are excessive. ICEGEIN has automated the process using Ekahau tags, allowing caregivers to press the buttons once a test is started and immediately after it is completed. This process results in online reports about the number of patients who have completed tests at any given time and helps the hospital to track if all the patients have completed the tests they have requested. The tags also will allow hospital staff to be alerted if a patient leaves the facility before all of his or her procedures are complete.

Ekahau RTLS is the only Wi-Fi-based location tracking solution that can operate over any Wi-Fi network, regardless of brand or generation. Apollo Hospital Chennai will run the Ekahau RTLS solution over its Cisco network, which is used across the 30,000 square foot facility. With Ekahau RTLS, Apollo Hospital Chennai will be able to achieve the best accuracy in the industry, enabling it to pinpoint location of patients down to the sub-room level.

"A patient's length of stay for these outpatient tests has a direct bearing on our ability to manage capacity in our departments, and ultimately impacts our costs and revenues," said Dr.Udhaya Balasubramanian, HOD. Department of Preventive Medicine of Apollo Group, parent company of Apollo Hospital Chennai. "Ekahau RTLS deployed by ICEGEIN shows great promise in helping smooth our processes and enable efficient utilization of all hospitals resources, while minimizing the time patients must wait."

Because it is standards-based, Ekahau RTLS can be quickly deployed in a matter of days or weeks, eliminating the expense and time required by other systems to install readers, cabling, choke points and exciters.

"Ekahau provided great support and service to help us quickly get the Ekahau RTLS system operational at Apollo Hospital Chennai," said Anand Surana, CEO of ICEGEIN. "Ekahau offers top of the line location tracking technology, which is not only easy to install and operate, but quickly enables the end users to achieve a significant return on their investment."

"Ekahau RTLS gives hospitals more visibility and control over their patient care processes," said Mika Kouhia, regional sales director at Ekahau. "We look forward to expanding our relationship with Apollo Group, as they realize the benefits of patient tracking for their outpatient services."

About ICEGEIN

ICEGEIN is a privately owned business with unique experience, expertise and focus on developing unique, valuable and innovative enterprise-class mobile, RFID re-traceability solutions targeting medical and healthcare industries, banking and financial institutions, manufacturers, logistics and also a wide range of organizations, enabling its users to utilize the full capabilities of their resources. ICEGEIN has developed a track record of client success, characterized by rock-solid accountability, industrial-strength architecture and unprecedented time-to-value. ICEGEIN's mission is simple to become the last best solution for the world of re-traceability. For more information about ICEGEIN, visit http://www.icegen.net.

About Ekahau Inc.

Ekahau Inc. is the industry leader in providing Wi-Fi-based RTLS solutions. Ekahau's RTLS technology is routinely recognized for its superior performance in customer benchmarking and competitive evaluations of Wi-Fi-based location tracking solutions. Ekahau's customers, including several Fortune 500 companies worldwide, are realizing the benefits of Wi-Fi based location services and innovative Wi-Fi network planning and optimization tools. Ekahau's solutions are being used in more than 150 hospitals around the world, as well as by manufacturers, mining/oil/gas companies, government agencies and the military. Ekahau partners include wireless software developers, leading system integrators and international OEM partners, who develop and market wireless enterprise applications. Ekahau is a U.S. based corporation, with offices in Saratoga, Calif.; Reston, Va.; Helsinki, Finland; and Hong Kong, China. For more information about Ekahau, please visit at http://www.ekahau.com.

(c) Copyright 2010, Ekahau, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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For further information: Media Contacts: Annina Pierson, Marketing Director, Ekahau, [phone], [email protected]; Juliet Travis, Rocket Science PR, for Ekahau, [phone] x 215, [email protected]