In previous posts about Ultra Wideband, we’ve looked at the many benefits it provides and how they’ll be used in healthcare settings in the future. But with all the good UWB provides, there are still some major barriers that need to be passed before mass UWB deployment in healthcare. Today, we’ll look at what those barriers are and how they might be traversed in future applications.
While the price of UWB location systems has gotten cheaper, it may still provide sticker shock to many providers. UWB technology is still relatively new and does not yet have the benefits of mass standardization and economies of scale.
The lack of standardization is a significant problem. While some systems may have ranges beyond 50m, not all systems will, affecting the number of devices necessary for full coverage. Different positioning methods are available with different advantages:
Two Way Ranging (TWR) is the most simple method using the round trip timing over the two way communication between devices to find the distance. However, this method reduces the battery life of the tag, may not scale well with lots of tags, and requires knowing the location of at least three devices in communication with the tag to trilaterate its location, which increases infrastructure costs.
Time Difference of Arrival (TDoA) systems use the timestamp of signal arrival at multiple devices to trilaterate location. This method doesn’t require two way communication, increasing tag battery life and scalability, but requires precise time synchronization between the anchored devices and more complex infrastructure, leading to higher costs.
Phase Difference of Arrival (PDoA) systems determine the distance and angle between two devices, only requiring one device with known location. This requires at least one of the devices to have two antennas to calculate the angle of arrival (AoA). While this method reduces the hardware needed, it requires specialized devices and also may have battery concerns as distance is calculated using TWR.
All this contributes to the customer being overwhelmed by choices and tradeoffs that are hard to understand the consequences of when the technology isn’t fully borne out yet. Future advancements and further adoption will help scale UWB technology, create more universal standards and lower costs to end users.
While Ultra Wideband offers much greater accuracy compared to previous systems, being able to fully utilize its rich location data requires accurate maps that are easily convertible between different location systems, as not all location platforms will use the same maps. Many location platforms use Cartesian coordinate systems overlaid on architectural drawings. While these maps are able to be set up very quickly, they have many limitations when compared to georeferenced maps. Cartesian maps may not use standard unit sizes which makes it difficult to convert to other location systems. They’re also limited to the drawings provided, which may not reflect the ground truth spatial relationships, especially if multiple buildings are involved. These maps end at the drawing as well, meaning tracking devices between buildings or campuses is more difficult.
Georeferenced maps are not standard practice as they take longer to set up, but are well worth the investment. As they use standardized coordinate systems, they can be easily converted to other coordinate systems including Cartesian systems, meaning that location data is easy transferred between multiple systems. They directly reflect the ground truth of the building and its spatial relationships, resolving potential inaccuracies caused by mapping errors. They also connect with the rest of the world, so it’s much easier to track things that move between campuses or outside of the hospital, as they never leave the map.
The ability to integrate with mobile devices is one of UWB’s biggest advantages and sources of opportunity. With UWB, every employee in a hospital could have access to centimeter-accurate location data allowing them to find the things they need so much faster. Where nurses currently spend an hour each shift looking for equipment, they could spend near zero with UWB. Not to mention, phones with UWB would be easier to find in the event that they’re lost as demonstrated by Find My. Future mobile-integrated systems could use phone fleets to locate devices, limiting the cost of support infrastructure and enabling more computing power on the edge, opening up new possibilities that may not be seen yet.
However, many hospitals are not in a position to reap these benefits, as they likely own more basic phone models for which UWB isn’t available yet. For iOS devices, UWB is only available in the iPhone 11 onward and is yet to be included in any of the iPhone SE models released to date (stay tuned for our breakdown of the Apple event on September 7th!), which are the most common in hospital settings.
While UWB can provide location capabilities to every employee in a system, many systems may be hesitant to invest in the best, most recent iPhones because of the cost of the devices, especially with the high loss rate of mobile devices. Phones are a huge investment for most health systems and Navv is seeing loss rates of 10-17%.
We recommend looking at our loss calculator tool to get an idea of the full financial impact of lost phones on healthcare systems.
This is unfortunate because having confidence in buying top-of-the-line models would allow healthcare systems to take advantage of so much more than just UWB. By only investing in new phones with UWB and not changing any fleet management strategies, hospitals open themselves up to lose more money on lost phones. But with a fleet management solution like Navvtrack, hospitals can invest in new, top-of-the-line devices with confidence knowing device loss will be kept to a minimum and data will be kept secure.
Ultra Wideband and the surrounding architecture still have room to grow and some ways to go before its benefits can be fully adopted and realized. However, the future looks bright for UWB as a multipurpose technology that can disrupt the industry standards that healthcare has settled for in the past. We’re excited for future healthcare environments that fully take advantage of all UWB has to offer and hope to be part of the solution to the barriers in its way.
