In the words of John Zammit – Property Services Partner at Maroba aged care, “If there are things we can do that can give our residents and their families comfort and peace of mind knowing that we can quickly deal with an emergency, then we try to do them. That means things like implementing Spotto equipment and asset tracking so that staff don’t need to go searching for the lifter they need — because they’ll know exactly where the nearest one is in the time it takes to type the name in Spotto. These are game changers for our residents, and our staff alike”
To hear John speak about how they never want to leave a resident in distress after a fall hammers home the most tangible benefit of asset visibility in aged care.
Maroba, a facility of 160 residents spread over four large buildings near the centre of Newcastle New South Wales, has consistently adapted and innovated to provide the best care they can, embracing technologies that make sense all the while being acutely aware that cost of new forward-thinking tools is a concern.
When Viv Allenson, Maroba’s much awarded CEO, learned about Spotto’s elegant and cost-effective solution for asset visibility she was enthused to just give it a go. Alongside the ability to respond to emergencies, Spotto would allow Maroba’s staff to spend more time on the core part of the organisation — resident comfort and care — and substantially less time wasted on searching for equipment. And with the ongoing challenges of staffing since COVID, every moment wasted can mean a resident not receiving care. With Spotto installed on every workstation around the four buildings, and on staff mobiles there’s never the need to send out search parties.
Spotto provides businesses like Maroba with fast, easy to use equipment search capabilities with minimal hardware requirements. If you know how to search with Google, then you already know how to locate equipment with Spotto. Maroba has set up a Spotto shortcut on all of their PCs and staff can run Spotto on their mobile devices whenever they want, and since it doesn’t cost any more to run Spotto on any device, they’re encouraged to use it as much as they need to.
Here’s how Spotto works
Spotto is straightforward to set up and has been designed with non-technical folks top of mind. To start, staff can tag any piece of vital equipment with a small Bluetooth tracking tag, then install a matchbox-sized Spotto beacon reader into each zone where tracking is required. Beacon readers are on the lookout for Bluetooth signals from equipment tracking tags and show staff exactly where items are, or where they were last seen. Hot items like oxygen trolleys, Sarah steadies and WoWs are a great match for equipment tracking.
Staff and patients aren’t the only ones benefiting from real-time asset visibility. John highlights, “Spotto’s made maintenance visits from our suppliers more streamlined too. They can go straight to the equipment they’re tasked with without having to locate it by sight around all four buildings. When there are several bits of equipment — that search can take quite a while and we end up bearing the added cost of that visit.”
John puts it very simply, “Now that we can offer these services without breaking the bank, why wouldn’t we? Our residents deserve the best care we can provide and Spotto is another of those technologies that helps us do just that.”
A radically low-cost system
A few years ago real time tracking systems were out of the price range of Aged Care facilities but Spotto’s lightweight approach and use of cloud computing has meant that businesses like Maroba can tailor the solution to their needs without relying on external services and expensive specialists.
Spotto has been engineered in regional New South Wales and is trusted by NSW Health to improve response time, decrease operational inefficiency, and provide more patient care thanks to reclaimed time.
Electro-com, Australia’s leading specialist distributor of tracking hardware and sensor technologies is Spotto’s preferred partner specialising in supporting the Aged Care sector.
Visit our website to try Spotto for free or book a one-on-one chat with absolutely no obligation.
For info call Lynda Flanigan of Electro-Com: 1300 130 806
