Keep reading to discover how we arrived at these numbers.
Healthcare institutions face challenges in managing assets, ensuring the safety of staff and patients, and optimizing workflows. Traditional methods often lack the real-time visibility and control necessary for these critical components. Healthcare Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) offer a solution that enables real-time tracking and managing of resources within healthcare facilities. By utilizing technologies such as WiFi and Bluetooth, these systems enhance operational efficiency, improve patient safety, and elevate the overall quality of care.
Combain’s healthcare indoor positioning technology accurately determines the location of individuals or devices inside a building. For instance, IPS can track the whereabouts of patients and staff, facilitating more efficient communication and coordination of care. Additionally, it can monitor the location of medical equipment and supplies, ensuring they are readily available when needed. This positioning solution can provide accurate location data at both the floor and room level in 3D.
Overall Value of Healthcare Indoor Positioning
Workplace violence, operational inefficiencies, and misplaced medical equipment present significant challenges in healthcare settings. However, precise positioning technology can drastically reduce these risks and inefficiencies.
Industry Insights
57 nursing staff are assaulted daily in healthcare settings (Press Ganey, 2022)
91% of emergency department staff report experiencing physical violence annually (American College of Emergency Physicians, 2024)
$100,000 average cost per workplace violence incident with injury (Securitas Healthcare, 2025)
Combain’s advanced indoor positioning technology, in combination with many 3rd party tracking devices, directly addresses these concerns, ensuring rapid response and precise asset tracking, ultimately enhancing staff safety and productivity.
The Benefits of Implementing IPS in Healthcare Settings
- Asset Management:
Tracking medical equipment minimizes losses, ensures availability, and facilitates maintenance scheduling, leading to cost savings. - Improved Staff Efficiency:
Real-time location data enables staff to quickly locate equipment and colleagues, minimizing the time spent searching and maximizing the time dedicated to patient care. By analyzing the movement patterns of both staff and patients, Intelligent Positioning Systems (IPS) can identify bottlenecks and optimize workflows, ultimately improving patient throughput and resource utilization. Safety and Compliance:
Monitoring patient and staff movements helps adhere to safety protocols and respond promptly to emergencies. A wearable duress system and danger-zone geofencing help protect staff from workplace violence in high-risk environments, like the emergency or psychiatric departments.Enhanced Patient Experience:
Extensive healthcare facilities can be challenging to navigate. IPS platforms like Traxmate, powered by Combains’ indoor positioning, offer wayfinding with interactive maps and turn-by-turn directions, enhancing the experience for patients and visitors. This minimizes late or missed appointments and relieves staff from giving directions.
Real-World Scenario
Enhancing Asset Location and Improving Operational Efficiency
Hospitals contain many critical devices, such as infusion pumps and defibrillators. IPS allows real-time tracking of these assets, ensuring their availability and minimizing losses.
When healthcare personnel search for urgently required medical equipment, traditional communication and manual searching methods often fail to deliver timely responses. Combain’s positioning technology instantly provides real-time locations with room accuracy, enabling rapid, effective responses to emergencies and dramatically reducing equipment search times.
Research shows nurses spend approximately 12% of their shifts searching for medical equipment, causing substantial productivity losses, with an estimated annual cost of $14 billion in U.S. hospitals (Bennafield et al., 2023). Also, excess and replacement equipment purchases can be cut by up to 25%. (GE Healthcare)
ROI Scenario
For a hospital with 200 nurses, each working 8-hour shifts:
- Daily productivity loss: 192 hours (200 nurses × 0.12 × 8 hours/day)
- Annual productivity loss: 48,000 hours (192 hours × 250 workdays)
- Total annual financial loss: $1,920,000 (48,000 hours × $40 average hourly labor cost)
By adopting Combain’s asset tracking solution (annual cost: $100,000), hospitals can reduce equipment search times by approximately 30%, saving up to $576,000 annually.
A 476% ROI in the first year shows that asset-tracking solutions quickly pay for themselves in hospital environments where time is valuable.
Staff and Patient Safety
Through Smart Indoor Positioning
In dynamic and high-pressure healthcare environments, the safety of both staff and patients relies on the ability to respond to incidents quickly, accurately, and intelligently. Integrating indoor positioning systems with smart alerting and wearable technologies provides a crucial layer of protection and reassurance.
- Swift Response Times in Emergencies:
Healthcare Indoor positioning systems enable staff to locate and respond to emergencies quickly. Whether it’s a fall, patient distress, or a security threat, time is crucial—and IPS ensures the rapid deployment of assistance. - Wearable Panic Buttons:
Staff can discreetly trigger alerts using wearable panic buttons, immediately transmitting their location and situation to designated responders. This provides a quick lifeline during threats or emergencies and enhances psychological safety for all staff within the facility. - Targeted and Multi-Level Alerts: Advanced IPS platforms like Traxmate enable alerts that are:
- Targeted—whether personal, team-based, or facility-wide
- Categorized by criticality: information, important, or critical
- Multichannel—delivered via screens, smartphones, visual cues (lights), or audio alerts
- Alarm Localization and Wayfinding:
Responders can quickly identify the exact room or floor from which the alarm was activated, utilizing navigation tools to reach the location efficiently. This improves response times and minimizes confusion during emergencies. - Fatigue Mitigation and Staff Efficiency:
A study from the University of Gothenburg found that 40% of ICU nurses exhibit alarm fatigue when constant alerts desensitize staff and heighten the risk of missed alarms. By implementing intelligent IPS-based systems that notify only the appropriate personnel based on their location and role, healthcare facilities can significantly reduce unnecessary notifications and help prevent burnout. - Collaborative Safety:
Location awareness helps to quickly identify nearby colleagues who are available, ensuring swift assistance for team members in need and fostering a supportive, real-time safety network. - Enhanced Patient Care:
When alerts go straight to their assigned caregivers, patients receive the best help. Whether dealing with a mobility issue, a pain episode, or a medical emergency, patients get timely assistance from the staff who understand their conditions best.
With these capabilities, indoor positioning systems become more than location tools—they become central to a facility’s safety, trust, and efficiency culture.
Technology Highlights
Healthcare Indoor Positioning
AI-Powered Indoor Positioning
- Real-time, precise location data with room, floor, building, and department-level accuracy
- Optimized for indoor environments with no GPS coverage
Seamless Integration & On-Premise Deployment
- Integrates effortlessly with existing hospital infrastructure and alarm systems
- Reliable on-premise solutions ensuring continuous operation
Works with many 3rd-party devices and systems
There is a vast market of suppliers of tracking platforms, asset management systems, trackers, alarm buttons, and more that are fully compatible with Combain positioning. Contact us to discuss suitable solutions for your needs.
Conclusion
The Business Case for Advanced Healthcare Positioning
Integrating seamless indoor positioning in healthcare is not just a technological upgrade—it’s a financial and operational necessity. Combain’s AI-powered positioning solution delivers measurable results across key areas:
- 476% ROI from asset tracking by reducing time wasted searching for equipment
- Significant ROI from workforce safety improvements, minimizing injury-related costs and disruptions
- Enhanced patient experience through indoor navigation, reducing missed appointments and confusion
Beyond these numbers, indoor positioning technology improves workplace safety, boosts productivity, and supports high-quality patient care—laying the foundation for sustainable, long-term operational excellence.
As healthcare systems evolve and adopt more digital solutions, investing in real-time positioning ensures your facility remains competitive, efficient, and prepared for the future.
Get Started
Want to know how we can help you?
Contact us today to schedule a consultation and learn how seamless, advanced indoor and outdoor positioning can transform your healthcare facility – saving money, optimizing efficiency, and protecting staff and patients.
Precise indoor location ensure immediate emergency response when it matters most.
Track medical equipment across departments in real time—boosting efficiency, reducing search time, and saving costs.
Combain healthcare indoor positioning provides building, floor, and room accuracy throughout healthcare facilities.
Designed for hospital-grade reliability with optional full on-premise deployment—no reliance on cloud or external connectivity.
Project considerations
- Select long-life, battery-powered tracking devices and wearables from 3rd parties, positioning-enabled by Combain
Utilize existing WiFi and Bluetooth infrastructure
Complement existing systems with minimal additional equipment
Ensure room-level accuracy for effective emergency response and asset location
Choose on-premise deployment to protect sensitive healthcare data
Integrate with staff duress systems and hospital alert platforms for real-time response