Authors (including presenting author) :
Wong SY(1), Chan PSA(1), Au KMB(1)
Affiliation :
(1)Occupational Therapy Department, Tai Po Hospital
Introduction :
In occupational therapy department, there are many assistive devices and equipment on loan to patients. Inventory checking needs to be performed regularly to facilitate effective management of inventory items. In the past, paper forms were used to handle the loaning of equipment. However, the work procedure was highly inconvenient and there were frequent mistakes. Hence, a new management system was designed, making use of new technology to improve the overall work flow for these repetitive tasks and in turn enhancing work efficiency and daily operation.
Objectives :
To improve the inventory management
To improve the loan system in the department using a paperless method
Methodology :
To improve management of ADL devices and other assistive equipment, an inventory management system which utilized radio-frequency identification technology (RFID) was set up. RFID is a wireless communication technology, and the wireless signal can be used to identify specific targets and read corresponding data on the target. Staff would use a RFID detector to scan the items in a room and perform inventory checking. The scanning could be done rapidly from a distance as the RFID tags did not have to be scanned directly or in the line-of-sight of the detector.
Result & Outcome :
RFID can improve the whole work flow, facilitating a more effective and accurate inventory checking process. This is important as there are more than 800 asset items and patient-use items in the occupational therapy department. In the past, it took a long time to perform inventory checking, and missing items could not be easily identified. With this new inventory management system, the time for recording and locating asset items has been significantly reduced. Also, it serves as a loan system with reminder function. As a result, inventory items that have been on loan could also be located and retrieved with the click of a button.
