Assessing the performance of an innovative IoT two-bin kanban “smart” shelve on a hospital’ logistics

While most of the research on RFID-IoT in healthcare sector focuses on mobile devices management and patient monitoring, this research contributes to our understanding of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to improve (internal) hospital’ medical supply logistics processes.
Although various replenishment-distribution point of use solutions are available in the market to meet the expanding workload, little is known about their real impacts on reducing costs, improving availability of medical supplies and driving better clinical outcomes. Additionally, with various competing solutions and supporting technologies, there is no single dominant model nor “best” replenishment distribution method. Managers are then wondering what is the “most appropriate” option for their use cases. The comparative analysis is not simple, since most of solutions are sold as proprietary solutions (lock-in licenses with vendors) with the underlying technological design, often presented at a high level by the vendors.
Following a Design Science approach, the purpose of this project is to develop an IoT two-bin kanban “smart” shelve replenishment system of medical supplies that can be used in a hospital nursing unit. This smart shelf combines various technologies including passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology and indicative led.
The originality of this project lies in combining RFID-IoT technologies and hybrid simulation modeling that uses data from a real project to explore the impacts of the technological solution on critical logistical business processes and its impacts on patient care as well.

Faculty Supervisor:

Yasmina Maïzi;Amin Chaabane

Student:

Partner:

Gestion Richard Philippe;9266-5777 Québec Inc

Discipline:

Business

Sector:

Administrative and support, waste management and remediation services

University:

Université du Québec à Montréal

Program: