In today’s dynamic healthcare environments, ensuring the safety and security of staff and patients is paramount. Kontakt.io’s Staff Safe solution, one of many applications within the Kio Cloud Platform, leverages its AI-enabled Real-time Location System (RTLS) to enhance people safety. It provides a discreet alerting system and rapid incident response to support an organization’s duress protocols.
Topics include:
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Fast time to deployment: Implement safety measures quickly with minimal disruptions using Kontakt.io’s cloud-based infrastructure. Our team of experts ensures swift installation and integration into your existing environment.
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Easy to use: Intuitive and seamless operation for both staff and responders, requiring minimal training and support.
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Scalable: Easily expand coverage and functionality as your needs grow. The modular infrastructure ensures scalability by leveraging existing BLE-enabled Wi-Fi infrastructure.
The same Smart Badge used for staff safety duress alerts can also serve multiple other needs across your operations, such as:
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Asset tracking: Find and locate equipment closest to you, ensuring quick access to necessary tools and improving operational efficiency.
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Nurse call cancellation: Automate nurse call alert cancellation when entering the patient room, saving time and reducing alert fatigue among staff.
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Hand hygiene compliance: Automate staff hand hygiene activities to improve infection control.
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Patient credential display: When entering a room, automatically show staff credentials on a patient display or TV screen, enhancing transparency and patient trust.
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Other use cases: Expand the badge's functionality to cover additional applications, such as patient flow and resource orchestration.
The Staff Safe solution leverages Beam Minis for 100% room-level certainty at low latency (< 3 seconds). Unlike Bluetooth-only location systems that provide only pod or zone-level accuracy, Kontakt.io’s modular infrastructure allows you to deploy Beam Minis only where needed, providing precise location data when it matters most, ensuring quick and accurate responses in duress situations.
The Staff Safe solution seamlessly integrates with various existing systems to enhance its functionality and fit into your organization’s technology landscape. These existing integrations include:
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Wi-Fi Access Points: Leverage providers, like Cisco Spaces, to extend BLE connectivity using your current network infrastructure.
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Emergency Notification Systems: Integrate with leading platforms, such as Singlewire and Spok, to streamline and automate emergency notifications.
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Nurse Call Cancellation Systems: Integrate with systems, such as Rauland Borg and Hillrom, to allow staff to cancel alerts quickly and efficiently.
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EHRs: Connect with your existing EHR systems to ensure a comprehensive, integrated approach to staff and patient safety.
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Staff feel valued and safe: When staff encounter an emergency, they can discreetly press a button on their Smart Badge to call for help. This activates an alert and notifies responders of their real-time location.
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Empowered responders: Responders receive detailed alert notifications, including the staff's real-tlme location, enabling swift and effective interventions.
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Room-level certainty: Thanks to the modular Beam Minis, responders can be dispatched precisely to the room where help is needed, providing location accuracy in critical moments.
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Alert state awareness: Alerts go through various statuses from activation to resolution, ensuring complete visibility into the current state of all incidents.
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Alert metrics and insights: Gain actionable insights from comprehensive alert metrics to optimize safety protocols.
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Alert Webhooks: Instantly send alerts to designated third-party systems for seamless integration.
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Role-based permissions: Control access based on user roles, ensuring secure and tailored use of the system.
The Staff Safe framework consists of IoT tag and Infrastructure devices and the Kio Cloud platform, providing a robust, reliable solution for staff safety.
The following illustration highlights the framework and architecture.
This consists of IoT devices deployed to support the Staff Safe solution.
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Tags - the moving devices
Smart Badges: These are wearable devices worn by people for staff duress alerts and location awareness. Badges continuously broadcast data via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and empower staff with instantaneous alert activation from two easy-access buttons.
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Infrastructure devices - the stationary devices
BLE-enabled Access Points: These devices leverage the Wi-Fi network you already have in place, such as Cisco Catalyst 9100s Access Points and Cisco Spaces, to enhance BLE connectivity and optimize deployment without the need for additional infrastructure.
Portal Lights (BLE to Wi-Fi Gateway): These devices aggregate data from Kontakt.io BLE devices and send the data to Kio Cloud over the Wi-Fi network. They also provide the over-the-air (OTA) device firmware and configuration updates for BLE-only Infrastructure and Tag devices.
Beam Mini: Adds room-level certainty with its built-in IR transmitter, ensuring precise location accuracy.
The Kio Cloud is a suite of apps designed to manage Kontakt.io's IoT devices, the location topology, user access management, and the Kio solution-based apps shared components.
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AI Location Engine: Computes accurate, room-level data for Kontakt.io's RTLS, occupancy, and indoor navigation solutions.
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Smart Location: Manage the mapping of the physical locations where Kontakt.io solutions and IoT devices are deployed. Smart Location consists of the following:
Mapped location topology: A hierarchical mapping consisting of campuses, buildings, floors along with digital floorplans, and rooms. This topology is used by the AI Location engine that computes accurate, room-level data for Kontakt.io's RTLS, occupancy, and indoor navigation solutions.
Departments: Group rooms for use within the Kontakt.io solution-based apps.
Spaces: Group rooms or seats for use with the Workspace Insights app.
Footfall: Locations that identify the floors where people footfall occupancy is measured by a Kontakt.io Portal Beam. For use with the Workspace Insights app.
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Company Settings: Manage the shared components for the Kio solution-based apps.
Entity Management: Manage Entity Types (staff roles, asset types) and Entities (staff, assets). Staff Roles and Staff are used by the Kio people safety and workflow apps. Asset Types and Assets are used by the Kio RTLS apps, such as Asset Tracker, IV Pump, and Wheelchair Manager.
Room Management (shared with all Kio solution-based apps): Define room types, set room type rules by entity types for automated statuses by rooms, and match Smart Location rooms to their room type. Room Types also provide the PAR level management for the Kio IV Pump and Wheelchair Manager apps.
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Entity Manager: An associated app to Company Settings with limited access to entity (staff and assets) management.
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Users: Manage who has access to the Kio Cloud platform's suite of apps.
User permissions are role-based, with each role having a specific permissions. If a user is not assigned a role within an app, the app is not available to them from their Kontakt.io Launchpad.
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Device Management 2.0: Manage Kontakt.io IoT devices.
This includes claiming Kontakt.io orders, managing device settings, getting insights into device inventory, and keeping devices up-to-date with the latest firmware.
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Device Health: Monitor the health of Kontakt.io IoT devices.
Get alerts when devices may need attention. The alerting features include three available alert types, optional alert delivery mediums, and elective monitoring of devices by specific devices, device types, or by locations.
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Kio Setup Manager: A mobile app used to install Kontakt.io infrastructure devices, including the Portal Light, Portal Beam, and Beam Mini. It also offers device troubleshooting capabilities.
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Staff Safe Alerts for the iPad: A mobile version of the Staff Safe web app "Simple View". This app provides responders with access to active alerts at their selected location, as well as the ability to acknowledge and resolve alerts.
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Kio Entity Manager: A mobile companion to the Kio Cloud Entity Manager web app, providing users a method to assign Smart Badges to staff.
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Kio Proximity: A mobile app that locates nearby Kontakt.io BLE Tag devices commonly attached to tracked assets or worn by people. Using Bluetooth signal strength (RSSI), it determines the proximity of Tags to your real-time location. The app is especially useful for locating Tags that may be out of range of a Portal Light or other BLE-to-WiFi gateway device.
The Staff Safe app is designed for scalability and ease of use while providing a comprehensive tool for administrators, stakeholders, and personnel responsible for responding to staff duress incidents.
The following provides an overview of the concepts and terminology unique in the Staff Safe app.
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Staff
The people wearing Kontakt.io Smart Badges. Each staff member has a unique profile, which includes their assigned Staff Role and Smart Badge (tag). Staff are Entities within Company Settings.
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Staff Roles
A Staff Role is a method to categorize staff by their roles within your organization. Staff Safe provides metrics by roles, and roles can also be assigned to Alert Rules. Staff Roles are Entity Types within Company Settings.
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Staff Groups
Staff Groups provide an additional method to segment staff. Unique to groups, staff can be assigned to one or multiple groups,
Staff Groups are required for the "response time" metric. When configuring an Alert Rule, a specific Staff Group is assigned to the Incident Responder setting. The response time is measured by the system tracking which responder - a staff member wearing a smart badge and assigned to the group - first enters the room location where an alert was activated.
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Alert Rules
Alert Rules define the monitored conditions that trigger staff duress alerts and the notifications sent when staff activate an alert from their Kontakt.io Smart Badge. Each Alert Rule's configuration includes the monitored locations, the button event that triggers an alert (blue, red, or any button), the staff the rule applies to, and who receives alert notifications and the notification methods. The notification methods include email, SMS text, or through a Webhook that delivers alerts to a third-party system. Webhooks are configured in Company Settings and assigned to Alert Rules.
Alert Rules can also be configured to track first-response time metrics by assigning a Staff Group to the Include Responder setting. When a member of this group first enters the location where the alert was activated, the system acknowledges the alert and logs the response time. This data contributes to the calculation of the Average Time to Respond, viewable in the Safety Summary Dashboard and at the individual alert level.
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Alerts
Alerts are the duress alerts activated by staff from their Kontakt.io Smart Badge. Responders receive alert notifications with the staff's real-time location, enabling them to respond and de-escalate the alerting incidents.
Your organization has the ability to customize the button event that activates an alert, including the buttons and the number of presses.
Alert Rule configuration: Specifies the button - blue, red, or any - triggers an alert.
Smart Badge configuration: By factory default, alerts are activated by pressing a badge button three times in quick succession . Optionally, a badge can be configured for single-press activation, though this is not recommended due to the increased likelihood of false alerts.
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Users
A User is someone with access to the Kio Cloud platform suite of apps. User access is managed from the Kio Cloud Users app, which employs role-based permissions to ensure appropriate access is granted to users based on their responsibilities.
Staff Safe users typically include those managing the app's settings, alert responders, and stakeholders requiring insights into analytics and metrics.