Unveiling the Application Scenarios of Medical Equipment Positioning

2025-02-17/ By Admin

1. Navigation device in the operating room

In the operating room, a crucial place that is racing against time and concerns life and death, every second is crucial, and every operation cannot be missed. Medical equipment positioning technology is like equipping doctors with a precise "navigation device", providing a solid guarantee for the successful implementation of surgery. Taking orthopedic surgery as an example, precise positioning of bone position is highly required for surgeries such as fracture reduction and joint replacement. Under traditional surgical methods, doctors mainly rely on techniques such as X-ray fluoroscopy to determine the surgical site. However, this approach not only carries radiation risks but also has limited positioning accuracy, making it difficult to meet the requirements of complex surgeries. Nowadays, with the application of orthopedic surgical robot assisted positioning technology, this problem has been effectively solved.

At the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, an orthopedic surgical robot was successfully used to perform surgery on a patient with a right calcaneal fracture. The surgical team first installs a tracer shaped like an "antenna" at the patient's surgical site, which is combined with a mobile C-type X-ray diagnostic device to simulate the image of placing a nail on the patient's body using 3D image planning. By using a unique algorithm to calculate the optimal nail point and nail path, the robot's robotic arm accurately moves to the planned position. Subsequently, the chief surgeon used the robot's guide sleeve to precisely insert hollow screws into the patient's fracture site through the skin, following the path and position planned by the robot in advance. Throughout the entire surgical process, the placement of the nail was successful with less than 5 milliliters of intraoperative bleeding, a surgical incision of only 0.5 centimeters, precise positioning, and an implantation error of no more than 1 millimeter. Compared with traditional surgery, it not only avoids large incisions and eliminates the tedious repeated X-ray positioning steps, but also greatly shortens the surgical time, improves the safety and success rate of the surgery. The patient's postoperative recovery is also faster, and they were discharged within 2 days. Currently, they are gradually recovering.

2. Guardians of wards and intensive care units

In wards and intensive care units (ICUs), medical equipment positioning technology also plays an indispensable role and can be regarded as the "guardian" of patients' lives and health. In these areas, patients' conditions are often severe or unstable, requiring real-time monitoring of vital signs, timely detection of abnormalities, and treatment.

ECG monitor is one of the commonly used devices in wards and ICUs, which can monitor patients' vital signs such as electrocardiogram, heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, and blood oxygen saturation in real time. Through positioning technologies such as Bluetooth and RFID, the electrocardiogram monitor can transmit monitoring data in real-time to the terminal devices of medical staff, making it convenient for them to view changes in the patient's condition at any time. Once the patient's vital signs exceed the normal range, the monitor will immediately sound and light an alarm to remind medical staff to take timely measures. For example, when a patient's heart rate suddenly increases or decreases, blood pressure drops sharply, blood oxygen saturation decreases, and other situations occur, the alarm system will respond quickly, allowing medical staff to treat the patient in the first time and save precious time for saving the patient's life.

At the neonatology department of the First Hospital of Jilin University, the "Smart Ward Equipment Management System" independently developed by medical staff integrates various technologies such as wireless communication, sensors, and Bluetooth positioning into the medical management system. Nurses holding mobile phones can quickly locate the monitoring devices, non-invasive respiratory support (ventilators), infusion pumps, and other equipment used by the child through location tags. During the use of the device, the nurse opens the system program on their phone and can view the device usage status and adjust the device mode by scanning the code. The detailed information such as the status, disinfection status, and current location of the equipment will be updated in real-time on the computer PC of medical staff, achieving fine management and real-time monitoring of the equipment, greatly improving the work efficiency of medical staff and their ability to treat children.

3. The 'capable assistant' of hospital logistics management

For the logistics management department of the hospital, the medical equipment positioning system is a "capable assistant" that provides strong support for the efficient operation of the hospital. There are a wide variety and large quantity of medical equipment in hospitals, distributed in various departments and regions. In the traditional management mode, equipment allocation and management often rely on manual recording and searching, which is inefficient and prone to situations where equipment is idle or cannot be found.

With the medical equipment positioning system, hospital management personnel can real-time understand the location, usage status, and other information of each device through the management platform. When a department needs to allocate equipment, management personnel only need to enter the equipment name or number in the system to quickly locate the location of the equipment and make reasonable adjustments based on the actual situation. This not only greatly shortens the time for equipment deployment and improves the efficiency of equipment use, but also avoids situations where medical services are affected due to delayed equipment deployment.

In terms of equipment inventory, the positioning system has also demonstrated significant advantages. In the past, conducting equipment inventory in hospitals required a lot of manpower and time, and it was easy to encounter situations such as missing or wrong inventory. Now, with the help of positioning systems, managers can quickly obtain information such as the number and location of devices through one click operation of the system, achieving accurate inventory. After a large comprehensive hospital introduced an RFID medical equipment tracking and printing solution, a task that used to take several days to complete in a hospital wide equipment inventory was accurately completed in just a few hours, and the data accuracy was greatly improved. At the same time, by analyzing the usage trajectory and idle situation of equipment, hospitals can reasonably arrange maintenance plans for equipment, extend the service life of equipment, and reduce equipment management costs.