Indoor Positioning Industry is Ripe for Growth. This Startup is Making Access Affordable for Widespread Adoption.
PenguinIN founder believes real-time location services (RTLS) shouldn’t be a luxury for only those who can afford it. So, he created a better way to provide more access.
- Each year, hospitals can lose up to $4,000 per bed while one third of nurses spend, on average, one hour per shift simply searching for the equipment or supplies needed for patient care.
- Every month, trade shows and conference centers lose money and time locating exhibitor property, causing frustration, stress and dissatisfaction.
- Every day, patients and consumers enter large facilities only to find themselves lost.
- Loved ones with diminished memory become disoriented and displaced from assisted living communities.
- The perceptions generated by online customer sentiment (reviews and feedback) regarding their experience or care have become a driving force for attracting patients, employees, organizations and consumers to a variety of businesses.
Whether it’s a hospital, warehouse, school campus, shipping yard or conference center, these facilities all lose a lot of money, and the faith of patients, employees and consumers, when they can avoid it with an alternative solution to improve operations and save money that can be deployed quickly — real-time location systems (RTLS), for the purpose of indoor tracking.
A key challenge is the perception of RTLS as a “luxury” or “a nice to have solution” of questionable return on investment. That’s because traditional RTLS systems are custom and highly specialized using proprietary hardware making them expensive and complex to manage and upgrade. As a result, adoption has been mild. For example, only 10–30% of hospitals in the U.S. have a form or another of an RTLS system.
However, RTLS is something that facilities can’t afford not to install. The impact on improved operations, loss prevention, patient and staff safety, care and experience are measurable alongside sheer satisfaction and sentiment that creates a positive perception of the facility along with the company running it.
Enter PenguinIN
PenguinIN is the indoor positioning system using software as a service (SaaS) that easily connects to a facility’s existing infrastructure to track and locate key items (location of things) while giving facility managers a new tool to streamline operations. By rethinking RTLS from hardware to software, PenguinIN makes it much easier for any type of facility to afford and access the technology they need.
Mohammed Smadi, CEO of PenguinIN, says the perception facilities managers have of RTLS is not necessarily wrong, but wants them to know that there is a better, more affordable way to procure the technology. “Many of today’s indoor wayfinding and tracking solutions tend to degrade in performance because they exist in hardware that must be maintained and even replaced over time,” said Smadi. “These facilities need the software that can easily connect with their current infrastructure. They shouldn’t have to take on the additional expense of building a new, hardware-based infrastructure just for RTLS.”
He says the real difference in the PenguinIN technology and what currently exists is the company’s holistic approach to its service offering. For example, most RTLS solution providers do not have wayfinding technology and most wayfinding technology providers do not offer a RTLS — tracking — solution. But PenguinIN offers both. They’re called PenNav and PenTrack and they can be installed and used together or separately, depending on the facility’s objectives.
Market Demand is Driving Affordable Accessibility
Asset tracking may just be one of the biggest pain points for facilities worldwide. The loss of time and money simply spent in locating “things” that are needed, missing or stolen — commonly referred to as shrinkage — can save these organizations thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
Benefits of a good RTLS, or indoor positioning system, such as PenguinIN, include:
- Improved operational efficiency (staff time): Automating mundane tasks and reduce time spent looking for supplies, misplaced products or items
- Informed decision making: (e.g., measure asset utilization — make purchases for what you exactly need)
- For hospitals, improved patient experience (e.g., shorter wait times, improved service and outcomes): It can even improve the patient experience and outcome in emergency rooms by tracking how long they’ve waited and how long a physician has spent with the patient. Nurses’ stations can use it to track patient requests and even food deliveries
- Improved customer sentiment (e.g., tools to help gauge and improve patient satisfaction)
- Improved employee satisfaction by reducing frustration and stress
- Safer environment (duress calls, theft prevention, facility management): Facilities can even track air quality including dust, temperature and possible water leaks
And many, many more
Use Case: PenguinIN is currently fitting the largest national guard hospital in Saudi Arabia with its system with the goal of reducing missed appointments by patients. In the U.S., missed appointments are said to cost practices and facilities $200.00 each and cost the industry roughly $150 billion. Using the combination of both wayfinding and indoor tracking, patients can receive reminders, provide the appropriate time needed to arrive, park and walk, find the office faster and, thus, make their appointments on time. This shows the impact RTLS system can have on the bottom line and is becoming a common request by healthcare clinics and facilities. In fact, PenguinIN has created one of the highest market penetrations of any RTLS vendor in the region.
Reports show that the RTLS market is expanding quickly, unleashing a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide. The demand for access to the technology is there, but the budget often is not. So, while these facilities know the impact RTLS technology can have on operations, productivity, loss prevention and employee and consumer satisfaction, they simply feel they cannot afford to install the traditional systems that are more widely known.
With its many, many benefits, it’s no doubt that facilities across the U.S. are demanding affordable access to RTLS technology that is still accurate enough but also ready-made. Meaning that radio tags don’t have to be custom made but used off the shelf that work seamlessly with existing RFID and Bluetooth. This opens the doors to wide-spread adoption of indoor positioning technology.
How Can RTLS Be Both Affordable and More Effective for Facilities
PenguinIN is making RTLS solutions more accessible and affordable for all facilities big and small, addressing the major pain points that can make the business or institution more profitable and efficient long term. The answer may lie in their existing infrastructure including current Wi-Fi deployment.
Smadi says that for wide adoption of RTLS, the infrastructure must already exist, and tags should be off-the-shelf with mainstream accessibility. Major connectivity vendors like Cisco Meraki, Aruba and Ruckus, that provide connectivity to these facilities, are catching on and even integrating positioning engines as part of their Wi-Fi offering. As an ecosystem partner to these connectivity vendors, PenguinIN offers the potential of delivering custom cases to clients at a fraction of the cost and complexity of a standalone RTLS deployment.
“The impetus behind PenguinIN is to truly help these facilities operate better and more efficiently, save money and time all while improving employee satisfaction, patient experience and care and customer sentiment,” Smadi says. “These all go hand in hand and often one gets priority over another because of budget. We’re putting an end to that.”
About PenguinIN
PenguinIN is the indoor positioning system that easily connects to a healthcare facility’s existing Wi-Fi infrastructure to track and locate the key items and supplies that staff need to provide the best care to patients while also giving facility managers a new tool to streamline operations. The company is part of the Cicso Meraki ecosystem, making the software an “out of the box”, affordable and easy to deploy option for healthcare facilities. PenguinIN.com
