Overview

Healthcare inventory management is vital in helping hospitals effectively distribute life-saving vaccines, supplies and equipment to where it is needed. Apptricity partnered with the County of San Bernardino in order to streamline their inventory management system to expedite the distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine. San Bernadino county is located in southern California and is a part of the Greater Los Angeles area. Its population of 2.18 million spans across 37 cities stretching across 20,105 miles, making it the fifth-most populous county in California and the 14th-most populous in the U.S.

The Challenge

San Bernadino County California County sought out Apptricity, a global leader in IoT tracking technology to help in the fight against COVID-19. With over 250,000 confirmed cases across the county region, San Bernardino County began to access the potential challenges in handling and distributing the vaccine at the beginning of the vaccination release. There is a list of care instructions for the COVID-19 vaccination, and one important one is maintaining each vile at a specific temperature and ensuring use within a certain timeframe.

In addition to COVID vaccination tracking, the current management system could not provide tracking & reporting on all medical inventory and equipment. The county allocates and needed to track resources across hundreds of locations. It was virtually impossible to monitor inventory successfully, make necessary reorders, and distribute resources to high traffic departments or clinics.

The Solution

San Bernardino began working with Apptricity to address the potential challenges in handling and distributing the COVID-19 vaccine, as well as a solution for tracking all of their medical supplies, equipment, and vaccinations.

For the COVID-19 vaccinations, we implemented a Bluetooth temperature monitoring unit in each of the storage units. This asset monitoring solution gives real-time updates on the inventory status. It will send an immediate alert when the temperature is out of a given range and can trigger a work order if maintenance is needed. The RFID tags system will also provide minute-by-minute updates when a vaccination unit is removed from the storage device, allowing for advanced reporting options. San Bernardino County will apply the Apptricity tracking solution for all vaccines and essential medication across the county.

We understood their challenges and concerns regarding the lack of insight and visibility of their medical equipment and PPE inventory, especially during this pandemic. We tailored our IoT inventory & asset management platform to give San Bernardino County real-time location and quantity data. With the solution in place, they can monitor inventory levels and are alerted if quantity reaches set perimeters, alleviating overstocking or a shortage of supplies. This integrated system uses barcode, RFID, Bluetooth, and LTE tagging to provide flexibility and visibility at levels relevant to monitoring.

These combined solutions are saving both resources and time for the county. They now have complete visibility of their resources and can make everything count for San Bernardino County residents.