Radianse Inc. inked a strategic partnership with hospital products company Hill-Rom Inc. to create a better nurse call system.
Andover, Mass.-based Radianse said it signed a deal to have its real-time location system used in future generations of Hill Rom’s NaviCare Nurse Call system. The system uses RFID tags, LAN and WiFi receivers and complex algorithms to monitor the location of hospital equipment and patients.
Officials at Hill Rom said the integration of Radianse’s technology would eventually create a smarter nursing station that can constantly monitor equipment and patient locations, enabling quicker response times to changes in patients conditions and increased efficiency.
Radianse CEO Steve Schiefen told MassDevice the deal was essentially an OEM agreement whereby Hill Rom will sell Radiance’s tracking technology under the Hill-Rom brand. He declined to give specific numbers for the deal, but said Hill Rom has agreed to a pre-payment based on anticipated sales for the next 18 to 24 months, with the launch of the new system set for early next year.
Radianse has been in discussions with Hill-Rom for some time and there may be other, similar deals in the works, Schiefen added.
“We’re one of the older companies in the [real-time location system] market, so we’ve been talking to a number of companies over the years,” he said.
Radiance equipment is used in more than 75 hospitals, according to the press release announcing the deal.