9/10/2019
Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
GE Healthcare Japan Corporation
Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Head Office: Nagaokakyo-shi Kyoto; Chairman of the Board and President: Tsuneo Murata; hereunder “Murata”) today announced that its indoor positioning system, “OWLiQ™ tracking,” has been adopted by GE Healthcare Japan Corporation (Head Office: Hino-shi Tokyo; President and CEO: Soichiro Tada; hereunder “GE Healthcare”) for its “Brilliant Hospital” concept of IoT deployment in hospitals. The two companies are cooperating on efforts to improve efficiency and increase productivity, including through visualization of the operational status of medical
equipment in healthcare settings.
GE Healthcare’s “Brilliant Hospital” concept includes an Asset Performance Management (APM) service to achieve effective utilization of assets. Under the APM service, beacon transmitters are attached to medical equipment in a facility to visualize their location, enabling equipment utilization and the location of equipment that moves frequently to be grasped smoothly, thereby contributing proper asset management, greater work efficiency, and higher productivity.
The APM service, which started in 2017, has been introduced in several healthcare settings in Japan. Ohara HealthCare Foundation’s Kurashiki Central Hospital (location: Kurashiki-shi, Okayama Prefecture; Hospital Director: Sen Yamagata) reduced expenses used in updating equipment by around 30% over one year by launching a cross-department project team aiming to improve efficiency of the operation and purchasing process for medical equipment such as ultrasound diagnostic. Aiming for even greater efficiency, at present, it is working to improve the operation and positioning of equipment that corresponds to nearly 20% of the medical equipment brought in. In addition, Kusatsu General Hospital, Social Medical Corporation Seikoukai (location: Kusatsu-shi, Shiga Prefecture; Hospital Director: Masamitsu Hirano) has started using this system to grasp the movement of floor nurses and quantitatively assess the effect of improvement activities for increasing productivity.
The two companies are also collaborating in a variety of technical domains. In addition to continued application of this system, they are also examining such matters as real-time visualization of the dynamic state to grasp personnel status and for inventory control in indoor distribution warehouses, which is a challenge common to both manufacturing and healthcare settings. Going forward, the companies will continue developing and providing solutions that contribute to higher productivity in healthcare settings by meeting frontline challenges and needs.
About “Brilliant Hospital”
As Japan’s “super” aging society with a low birthrate progresses, the burden on the personnel and things that support healthcare settings is becoming more acute. In order to meet diversifying medical needs with limited resources, medical institutions must balance the improvement of efficiency with the improvement of the quality of medical care. Given this situation, GE Healthcare is working to realize the concept of a futuristic hospital—the “Brilliant Hospital”—that enables process improvement in hospital administration and real-time behavior modification by combining big data analysis inside medical institutions with leadership skills and Lean Six Sigma*1 cultivated within the GE Group.
*1 Introduced by GE in 2002. A management technique that combines the “lean production system,” which attempts to improve efficiency by thoroughly eliminating waste, with “Six Sigma,” which aims to establish advanced business processes by combining statistical analysis with quality control techniques.
About “OWLiQ ™ tracking”
The indoor positioning system “OWLiQ™ tracking” (hereunder “this system”) offered by Murata Manufacturing is a positioning system that uses Bluetooth® Low Energy beacon transmitters and receivers. Manufacturing plants and warehouses are a mixture of lots of people and things, which created a challenge: it was difficult to know what is where and to comprehend how workers are engaging in tasks. This system makes use of the deep expertise that Murata Manufacturing has in manufacturing scenes and the fields of wireless technology and communications. It was developed as an easy-to-use package that anyone can set up with ease. Attaching beacon transmitters to medical equipment in healthcare settings to visualize their location enables equipment utilization and the location of equipment that moves frequently to be grasped smoothly, thereby contributing proper asset management, greater work efficiency, and higher productivity; it’s the same as in manufacturing scenes.
To recommend effective use in healthcare settings, GE Healthcare has adopted this system in its own plants and is using it to discover issues in daily improvement activities and to quantitatively assess improvements.
The product will be exhibited at the .
Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd.
Murata Manufacturing is a global general electronic parts manufacturer that develops, manufacture, and sell ceramics based electronic parts. The company contributes to the growth of electronics society by developing proprietary materials, process, product designs, production technologies, supporting software and creating unique products on technology platform for analysis and evaluation.
About GE Healthcare
GE Healthcare is the $19 billion healthcare business of GE (NYSE: GE). As a leading provider of medical imaging, monitoring, biomanufacturing, and cell and gene therapy technologies, GE Healthcare enables precision health in diagnostics, therapeutics and monitoring through intelligent devices, data analytics, applications and services. With over 100 years of experience in the healthcare industry and more than 50,000 employees globally, the company helps improve outcomes more efficiently for patients, healthcare providers, researchers and life sciences companies around the world. Follow us on , , and , or visit our website for more information.
Murata in Brief
Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and sale of ceramic-based passive electronic components & solutions, communication modules and power supply modules. Murata is committed to the development of advanced electronic materials and leading edge, multi-functional, high-density modules. The company has employees and manufacturing facilities throughout the world.
For more information, visit Murata's website