TASSTA pilots its Indoor Localization and Lone Worker Protection features at a German Hospital

TASSTA, a Germany-based company, offers a strong product portfolio to critical industries where effective and reliable communications are needed. TASSTA’s solutions include tracking functions that enable the control of all operational activities and at the same time keeping the employees safe without a direct user action being required. TASSTA’s ecosystem includes solutions such as T.LION, T.BROTHER, T.FLEX, T.RODON, T.RECORDER, T.BRIDGE, T.COMMANDER and the latest cloud-based feature T.SHEDU.

The Healthcare Sector is one of these critical industries that benefit from the TASSTA features. In 2020 a huge pilot project started: TASSTA implemented a project in a hospital in Germany to make work and communications more efficient and strengthen the safety of all employees within the organization. The project was based on the combination of Indoor Localization and Lone Worker Protection features that enabled a precise location determination inside the building for emergency situations.

Indoor Localization

Localization or positioning is a well-known service nowadays. Navigation tools, such as real time maps and the Global Positioning System (GPS) are popular built-in tools in mobile phones that people use in their everyday-life. However, the main disadvantage of GPS is the loss of signal inside buildings or underground.

Indoor Localization tools are an important complement and an alternative to GPS. Unlike GPS, it doesn’t provide global coverage, but can be more accurate, efficient, and adaptive to local environments.

The GPS position is based on signals sent by GPS satellites. The more satellites a GPS receiver can find, the better the accuracy. In a similar way TASSTA’s Indoor Localization requires WiFi hotspots and access points. The positioning algorithm makes snapshots of both commercial WiFi hotspots and private access points without needing registration or access to the data network. This creates the perfect add-on to regular GPS-tracking which is able to provide the positioning of users in multi-story buildings like hospitals with an accuracy within a few meters.

Lone Worker Protection (LWP)

The LWP Alarming Solution is a personal alarm system protecting the employees’ safety by triggering an alarm signal in case of any accident situation. With LWP, the network can implement and provide both user-initiated and device-initiated alarm signals in case of an emergency.

By simply pushing the alarm button on the device the user can initiate an alarm but, also thanks to the integrated sensors of modern mobile phones, it is also possible to initiate different emergency alarms automatically, depending on the actual accident: Man-down, No movement, Fall detection and others.

When an emergency alarm is triggered a large group of people can be alerted via real voice communication and/or email and SMS. The current location (GPS coordinates) can be viewed by other users on a map in both mobile devices and in the T.Rodon dispatcher application.

These key features are extremely useful for employee tracking and safety not only in hospitals but other sectors such as Schools, Police departments and Fire Brigades.

With the combination of the LWP and the Indoor Localization the exact location of the alerting devices can be transmitted and Video and Audio Feeds can be enabled from any device that finds itself in a situation of emergency.

In this German hospital, every single employee was given a device to make sure she/he was able to contact anyone at any time if needed, or the other way around. TASSTA made a huge step in boosting the hospital’s emergency response and safety precaution processes.