Austin is one of Texas’ largest cities, containing the fourth-largest population of all Texas cities and housing the capitol building for the state. One of the many departments managed by the city is emergency medical services (EMS). The City of Austin’s Emergency Medical Services Department provides emergency medical responses to Austin and Travis County citizens serving a population of over 2.2 million citizens in a service region of over 1,039 square miles.

The Challenge

The Austin-Travis County EMS is responsible for tracking medical and equipment supply distribution to over 100 different locations. Many medical supplies transported are perishable, and this adds additional layers of tracking needs like monitoring expiration dates and storage temperature. Because of the unique metrics monitored, the department cannot rely on a manual asset and inventory management process. Spoilage increased due to product expiration or improper storage, so did the loss in revenue and the concern of inadequate supplies in medical emergencies.

Along with monitoring the state of the supplies, Austin-Travis County EMS also needed to safely secure their supplies and decrease shrinkage from general loss or theft.

These combined challenges forced Austin EMS to overstock supplies to account for their losses.

The Solution

After an extensive selection process, the City of Austin selected the Apptricity Asset and Inventory Management solution to address the problems they faced in supply management. Apptricity’s solution covered the main areas of need:

• Monitoring supply vehicles and ambulances, including their onboard supplies
• Tracking supply quantities at each medical station and storage facility
• Tracking EMS assets and medical equipment

Tracking the Vehicle and Supplies and Equipment Within

The Austin-Travis County EMS solved many of their shrinkage issues by outfitting supply vans and EMS ambulances with Apptricity I-Connect Controllers and tagging their essential assets and supplies with RFID tags. This combination of hardware provided increased visibility of the quantity of each vehicle’s inventory and improved tracking of critical EMS equipment such as monitors, stretchers, backboards, and stairlifts. Each Apptricity I-Controller was outfitted with an LTE antenna and multiple RFID antennas, allowing the department to scan items in real-time and have data sent to the Apptricity Cloud through LTE connectivity.

Real-time Inventory at the Medical Station

Using the same configuration of Apptricity I-Connect Controllers and RFID tags, the Austin-Travis County EMS has gained real-time insight into supply quantities at each medical station. Automated cycle counts are conducted to update quantities at each location, eliminating the error-prone manual supplies-counting process.

Automated Movement Updates Sent to MAXIMO

As supplies and assets are transferred from the warehouse to supply vans, EMS ambulances, and medical stations, Apptricity I-Connect controllers constantly scan RFID tags and update each item’s location. Real-time data is sent to the MAXIMO system used by Austin EMS for resource planning and inventory costing.

Apptricity helped Austin EMS reduce shrinkage and gain real-time visibility on the quantity and location of essential supplies and medical assets with a combination of cloud-hosted software and IoT-enabled hardware. To see how Apptricity can help your city, contact info@apptricity.com or learn more at apptricity.com.