What is RTLS in healthcare?
Real-Time Location Services (RTLS) give hospitals live visibility of equipment, staff, and spaces. Cutting costs, saving time, and improving patient care.
RTLS is smart hospital technology that uses sensors and IoT to track assets, staff, and environments in real time.
In healthcare, this can mean:
- Knowing where critical medical equipment is, when you need it.
- Seeing bed and room availability instantly to ease patient flow.
- Protecting staff with real-time safety alerts and hygiene monitoring.
- Monitoring fridges, freezers, and clinical spaces for compliance and infection control.
With RTLS, hospitals run smarter, safer, and more efficiently, giving time back to frontline teams so they can focus on patients, not processes.
Why hospitals need RTLS
Healthcare providers face daily challenges:
- Lost, hoarded, or underused equipment leading to high cost.
- Patient flow bottlenecks leading to longer waiting times.
- Manual compliance and hygiene checks wasting staff time.
- Limited real-time data making capacity planning difficult.
RTLS helps solve these challenges by connecting people, assets, and environments across the hospital, giving decision-makers the visibility they need.
The benefits of RTLS in healthcare
Hospitals and Trusts using RTLS technology see measurable results:
- Reduced equipment spend through better utilisation.
- Smoother patient flow and faster transfers.
- Fewer treatment delays with real-time bed management.
- Improved infection control and safer environments.
- Greater visibility of available beds improves management of care.
