Asset Tracker is a real-time location solution in the Kontakt.io platform, designed to help hospitals find and manage medical equipment quickly and easily. Using AI-enabled RTLS (Real-Time Location System) and Bluetooth® Low Energy (BLE), it shows exactly where assets are—down to the room—so staff can get what they need, when they need it. Asset Tracker reduces search time, improves equipment utilization, and helps keep operations running smoothly.
Why Kontakt.io?
Fast to deploy: Implement quickly with minimal disruptions using Kontakt.io’s cloud-based platform and IoT devices. Our team of experts ensures swift installation and integration into your existing environment.
Easy to use: Intuitive features and interface for both users and administrators, requiring minimal training and support.
Scalable cloud platform: Easily expand coverage and functionality as your needs grow. The modular infrastructure ensures scalability by leveraging the existing BLE-enabled Wi-Fi infrastructure.
Asset Tracker features
Real-time location tracking: Provides precise, up-to-date information on the location of medical equipment (assets) within a facility—reduces staff time spent searching for assets and ensures they can locate the right asset at the right time.
Automated room-level asset statuses: With Room Types and Room Matching and Room Type Status Rules you'll always know the status assets by their room location—simplifies the process of identifying those that are available, in-use, down, or unavailable.
PAR Level tracking: Proactively manage inventory by comparing real-time counts against the ideal (Target) and minimum (Critical) thresholds along with PAR Level alerts—this can reduce delays, minimizes manual audits, and help to ensure rooms are consistently stocked to meet demand.
Rental tracking: Track and monitor rented equipment to optimize usage and avoid extra rental fees.
Preventative maintenance tracking: Track and monitor scheduled asset maintenance to minimize downtime and support compliance reporting.
Home location tracking: Assign assets to a home facility and department to see at a glance which assets are at their home location and which are away.
Analytics: Access real-time insights on asset utilization, status, PAR Levels, and rental metrics.
Location alerts: Avoid asset elopement by notifying staff when assets enter or exit locations—this provides proactive responses to reduce loss prevention or misplacement of assets.
PAR Level alerts: Get notified when assets reach critical thresholds.
Alert integration: Instantly send alerts via Webhooks to designated third-party systems for seamless integration.
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Role-based permissions: Control user access based on their assigned user roles—ensuring they have the right permissions aligned with their responsibilities for a secure and tailored use of the system.
You can also grant user access to all campuses or specific campuses—this is especially helpful if you have a a large number of campuses and need to control the campuses users have access to across the platform.
For those that have integrated Single-sign On (SSO), administrators have visibility into the roles mapped to your identify provider's SSO Groups and each user's assigned SSO Groups.
The components: A connected framework of IoT devices and apps
The Asset Tracker solution combines Kontakt.io IoT Tags, Infrastructure devices, and the Kontakt.io platform suite of apps.
The following illustration highlights the solution framework and architecture.
The physical world
Tag devices
Tags are Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) devices attached to assets for real-time tracking and location accuracy.
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Asset Tag 2 is designed for long-term use with up to 8 years of battery life.
With its built-in IR receiver, combined with Kontakt.io Beam Minis, delivers 99% room-level accuracy at low latency (< 10 seconds).
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Asset Tag 2 Mini is optimized for smaller items with up to 4 years of battery life.
With its built-in IR receiver, combined with Kontakt.io Beam Minis, delivers 99% room-level accuracy at low latency (< 10 seconds).
Sticker Tag is an ultra-thin, lightweight adhesive tag ideal for daily-use items and small handhelds. It offers up to 12 months of battery life with the default Kontakt.io configuration (5-second interval).
Infrastructure devices
Infrastructure devices are the stationary devices that are assigned to their Smart Location install location.
BLE-enabled Access Points Leverage the Wi-Fi network you already have in place, such as Cisco Catalyst 9100s Access Points, to enhance BLE connectivity and optimize deployment without the need for additional infrastructure. Extend BLE signal coverage for Kontakt.io tags and sensors while transmitting collected data over Wi-Fi.
Portal Lights (BLE to Wi-Fi gateways): Aggregate data from Kontakt.io BLE devices and send the data to the Kontakt.io platform over the Wi-Fi network. They also deliver over-the-air (OTA) firmware and configuration updates to BLE-only Infrastructure and Tag devices.
Beam Mini: Adds room-level certainty with its built-in IR transmitter—resulting in 99% room-level accuracy at low latency (< 10 seconds).
The Kio Cloud: Management of mapped locations, devices, shared components, and users
The Kio Cloud is a suite of apps for managing Kontakt.io IoT devices, location topology, user access, and the Kio Apps shared components.
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:
Location topology: A hierarchical mapping consisting of campuses, buildings, floors along with digital floor plans, and rooms. Used by the AI Location engine to compute accurate, room-level data for Kontakt.io's RTLS, occupancy, and indoor navigation solutions.
Departments: Group rooms for use across the Kio Apps.
Spaces: Group rooms or seats for use with the Kio Workspace Insights app and the Kontakt.io Portal Beam.
Footfall: Locations that identify the floors where people footfall occupancy is measured by a Kontakt.io Portal Beam. For use with the Kio Workspace Insights app.
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Company Settings: Manage the Kio Apps shared components. Three core features:
- Entity Management: The Entity Types (asset types) and Entities (assets).
- Room Management: Room Types and Room Matching, which work together to set the status of assets by room. Room Types categorize the areas within your facility, such as Clean Storage or Patient Room, and each Room Type can define Entity Type Rules by Asset Type that determine the status assets take when they enter a matching room. Room Matching associates each Smart Location room with a Room Type, so the system knows which room-level rules to apply as assets move from one room to another.
- Webhooks: Send a triggered alert to a third-party system. A webhook defines the destination URL, the payload, the headers, and which apps are allowed to use it. Webhooks are created in Company Settings and then assigned to an Alert Rule in a Kio App, alongside the other notification methods — a webhook is never sent on its own.
Entity Manager: A companion to Company Settings that is limited to Entity Management (assets).
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Users: Manage who can sign in to the Kontakt.io platform and what each person can do, using role-based access control (RBAC). Three core features:
- User Management: Add and maintain user profiles, assign roles and campus access, and control sign-in — passwords, multi-factor authentication, and enabling, disabling, or deleting a user.
- Groups: Apply the same roles and campus access to many users at once instead of user by user. Managed Groups are maintained here; SSO Groups sync from your identity provider and are view-only.
- Integration API: Create and manage integration API clients — non-human accounts that let a third-party system connect to Kio Cloud. A client signs in with a client ID and secret rather than an email and password, and is assigned API roles rather than human-user roles.
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Device Management: 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 alert types, optional alert delivery mediums, and elective monitoring of devices by specific devices, device types, or by locations.
Kio mobile apps: Companion apps for device installation and tagging assets
Kio Setup Manager: A mobile app used to install Kontakt.io infrastructure devices— including Portal Lights, Portal Beams, Beam Minis, and Anchor Beacons. It also offers device troubleshooting capabilities and access to BLE-only devices like Asset Tags and Smart Badges.
Kio Entity Manager: A mobile companion to the Entity Manager web app. Providing users a method to assign tags to assets on the go.
Asset Tracker concepts and terminology
Asset Tracker is designed for scalability and ease of use while providing a comprehensive tool for administrators, stakeholders, and staff needing to locate and manage tracked assets.
For definitions of the terms used throughout the app — assets, Asset Types, Tags, PAR Levels, Room Matching, alert statuses, and the rest — see Asset Tracker terminology.