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"CenTrak is at the forefront of innovative efforts to develop technologythat improves medical efficiencies while creating a better environment andexperience for patients," said Cornelia Huellstrunk, worldwide productmarketing manager for MSP430, Texas Instruments. "By leveraging TI's MSP430performance and power savings offerings, InTouch Care helps lower the burdenof RTLS installation while providing highly accurate tracking, saving costsfor facilities and helping to improve medical care."
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Accuracy and Ease of Use
InTouch Care networks consist of small tags placed on personnel, patientsor equipment, room monitors that are scaled like smoke detectors, and accesspoints that are centrally located on a floor and communicate to a computernetwork. The tags, which offer several options for deployment, come withbuttons and LEDs that can be customized for different functions, such asindicating that a patient is ready for a procedure. Non-line-of-sightGen2IR(TM) infrared provides unambiguous room-level positioning, and two-wayradio frequency (RF) communication enables all units to share location dataand system maintenance information as needed.
This unique signaling combination provides faster, more accurate locationof tags. Equally important is the InTouch Care installation process, whichallows for quick system piloting and ease of deployment in any hospital. Asidefrom the Ethernet-connected central access points, InTouch Care units operatefrom batteries that last, under normal operating conditions, up to five yearsin tags and four years in monitors. Since the units can be installed quicklyand without disruptive and costly power line or Ethernet wiring, thedeployment process that traditionally required four months of site surveys,preparation and installation, has now been reduced by CenTrak to a few weeks.
"The tremendous opportunity for InTouch Care RTLS lies in the solution itoffers our customers -- simple installation and increased accuracy," said Dr.Ari Naim, CEO of CenTrak. "InTouch Care's DualTrak breakthrough technology notonly creates a widely affordable infrastructure, but more importantly providesthe room-level and sub-room-level accuracy that enables valuable and excitingapplications. Because InTouch Care is scalable to millions of square feet andis able to track tens of thousands of tags, we expect a wave of small andlarge companies will build upon our infrastructure to create new solutions forchallenges that were previously impossible to solve."
An Integrated, Low-Power MCU Solution
All of CenTrak's InTouch Care units are based on TI's MSP430F20xx MCUs,which extend battery life by approximately 25 percent while providing up to 16MIPS (million instructions per second) for communication, identification andsystem control. An ultra-low power mode minimizes power consumption duringstandby cycles, and a fast wake-up ensures rapid response for active use.Integrated peripherals, including analog-to-digital conv
