Healthcare systems around the globe face enormous challenges. Growing demands on healthcare services, rising costs, chronic underfunding, dated healthcare infrastructure, long-term backlogs, and wider impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic have all exposed an increasing number of frailties across the sector.
Making the world a healthier place through the use of digital healthcare technologies to create more efficient healthcare facilities is fundamental to successful health outcomes in the coming decades. Bluetooth is transforming how healthcare facilities worldwide are using digital solutions to improve patient care.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), with help from ABI Research, recently released new market research that looks at how Bluetooth® technology is playing an important role in improving patient care across hospitals and clinics around the world.
The following is an excerpt from that report, Wireless well-being: How Bluetooth® technology is at the heart of healthcare transformation.
Digital solutions for improving patient care
Bluetooth is transforming patient care by supporting more proactive, efficient, and connected healthcare services where both patients and providers benefit from real-time insights, improved workflow, and stronger connections between care teams and patients.
By supporting real-time monitoring and optimizing resource management and facility operations, Bluetooth® technology is helping healthcare providers deliver more proactive, personalized care, leading to better patient outcomes and healthier lives.
Patient and equipment tracking
For many years, Bluetooth® technology has enabled real-time locating systems (RTLS) across a wide range of healthcare settings, including hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, and outpatient facilities. These solutions can achieve enormous operational efficiencies, significantly reduce the prevalence of lost or stolen assets, and improve patient well-being, safety, wait times, and overall satisfaction.
Healthcare facilities of all types use Bluetooth® technology to enable real-time tracking of patients and critical medical equipment, minimizing delays and ensuring that resources are always available when they are needed most, to accelerate response times. Bluetooth® patient trackers can also be used to help prevent wandering in eldercare settings, enhancing patient safety and giving caregivers peace of mind to know that vulnerable individuals can be quickly located.
In addition to dedicated RTLS infrastructure, Bluetooth® positioning capabilities are embedded within many Wi-Fi access points deployed in healthcare settings. These can enable a more seamless rollout of Bluetooth® Location Services. Meanwhile, the prevalence of low-power Bluetooth® enabled tags, badges, wearables, and other trackable devices can support active monitoring for up to several years, reducing the cost of maintenance and simplifying management. Many vendors provide wearable bracelets for use in care facilities to prevent patient wandering. Some of these include SOS buttons alongside continuous vital sign monitoring.
According to ABI Research, Bluetooth® RTLS deployments within healthcare settings are expected to grow significantly in the coming years, reaching over 70,000 facilities by 2030.
Healthcare facility management
Bluetooth® technology helps healthcare facilities maintain a safer, more efficient environment by automating sanitation monitoring and ensuring hygiene compliance — ultimately improving facility operations, reducing infection risks, and allowing caregivers to focus on delivering compassionate, patient-centered care.
Staff safety
Bluetooth® technology is vital in protecting the safety of healthcare staff. The 2024 National Health Service (NHS) staff survey reported that over 14 percent of staff had experienced at least one incident of physical violence from patients, service users, relatives, or other members of the public over a 12-month period. Badges or wearables that track the location of personnel can be equipped with panic buttons to share their location and summon help with a single button press.
Hygiene compliance
Bluetooth® connectivity can play a vital role in helping enforce hand-hygiene compliance. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), healthcare associated infections (HAI) cause complications in five to ten percent of admissions to acute-care hospitals in developed countries, while in the US alone, there are at least 80,000 related fatalities a year, equating to 200 deaths per day.
In support of preventing HAI, personnel badges can help monitor, encourage, and automate reporting of hand hygiene compliance. One such deployment in the University of Fukui Hospital in Japan resulted in a 300-percent increase in hand-hygiene policy compliance while attending to patients.
Indoor navigation
RTLS deployments can be combined with indoor wayfinding applications to enable patients, visitors, and healthcare personnel to efficiently get to their destination, saving staff time, reducing the chance of missed appointments or delays in care, as well as improving visitor satisfaction. In many healthcare settings, facilities can benefit from existing Bluetooth® enabled networking infrastructure to help streamline deployment and reduce the infrastructure costs for these solutions.
Creating a healthier world
Thanks to its diverse member ecosystem, strong presence in healthcare wireless infrastructure, support for small form factors, low power consumption, strong security, and continued technological innovation, Bluetooth® connectivity is uniquely placed at the heart of future healthcare transformation and will play a vital role in increasing healthcare resilience in the years to come.
To learn more about how Bluetooth technology empowers more efficient healthcare facilities, download the latest market research, Wireless well-being: How Bluetooth® technology is at the heart of healthcare transformation.
