The district operates four fire stations, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Three shifts of 22 firefighters’ staff three engines, a 75-foot ladder truck, and three rescue trucks. All firefighters are Emergency Medical Technicians; 37 are practicing Paramedics. Most district fire trucks provide Advanced Life Support level of care for medical emergencies.
“In 2020 our crews responded to 9,186 calls–including fires, rescues, medical emergencies, hazardous material events, and vehicle crashes.”
Medical Supplies Tracking
On the right, you can see Cindi Gallman performing a validation count on a pelican case that houses medical supplies. Each item has been tagged with an RFID label; this allows for very rapid counts (performed in seconds vs minutes). It also allows for the tracking of expirations. In addition the built in seeker gives the ability to quickly find an item which may be expired. The same technology can be used to search for a lot number recall as well.
Asset Tracking
The same scanning above is also applied to the apparatus whether it be an engine, rescue, brush truck, water truck, or hazmat. The scans on an apparatus say a Hazmat vehicle would take around 90 seconds to complete. This means in 90 seconds with RFID the user can verify all items are either present or something is missing. This process would normally take hours to complete.
Smartshelf Technology
Meanwhile in the stations, a cache of medical supplies is being tracked 24/7 365 days a year with no human intervention.
A system generated Pick Ticket is automatically generated for the Logistics personnel for each and every location—and it also includes any “expired” items that logistics personnel might have to remove during the delivery.
Real time visibility is achieved through RFID tagging and tracking via Smart shelf technology. Expired or about to expire items are identified when they hit the shelf well before they have a chance to be placed on an apparatus or utilized.
Narcotics Tracking & Chain of Custody
The final piece that South Trail Fire uses is the chain of custody narcotics tracking. This starts at the storage level in a safe or other secure storage area. Silent Partner Technologies can retrofit virtually any storage device with RFID to give the user 24/7 365 tracking of any item in the storage device/area.
The traditional shift log and run long are no longer found on paper, instead they are entered and stored electronically within the IntelliView cloud-based software. All transactions are logged and therefore can be searched and referred to for information. In the instance of a shift log the user may want to look at when the transfer took place, who was present during the transfer, what items were transferred, etc.
The run log keeps track electronically of the final disposition of the narcotic being utilized. What amount was used on the patient during the “run”? What amount was wasted or disposed of after the run? The run log also includes dual signature capture as well.
Additionally, South Trail Fire Rescue will be adding Silent Partner’s “Smart Key” technology to further enhance an already robust Chain of Custody process.
They are a progressive organization and are always looking forward to future endeavors to make their tasks easier. To that end Silent Partner Technologies IntelliView inventory and asset tracking solution afford them that scalability and functionality to grow as they deem necessary.
For more information please contact us.
