RTI Drives Ticketing System in Triemli City Hospital’s Emergency Centre
When theTriemli City Hospital in Zurich renovated its Emergency Centre in 2017, oneissue managers wanted to address was efficiency. Traditionally, doctors hadspent hours running from room to room to see patients — time that could havebeen spent on medical treatment.
As a solution, hospital managers envisioned anew ticketing system that would optimise patient coordination. To bring their vision to reality, they turned to Arbon-based integrator Aerne Solutions.
For the newsystem, Aerne installed a touchscreen with ticket printer outside the waitingarea, which patients use to print out a ticket linked to their medical files.
Staff and doctors interact with the system using their PCs, which are connected to a Triemli City server running encrypted software. To call a patient to a treatment room to check vital signs, draw blood, or perform medical treatment,the nurse or doctor simply selects their name on the PC.
The patient’s ticket number and corresponding treatment room are then displayed on two information screens in the waiting room, letting them know where to go. With the patient’s medical history linked to the ticket, doctors can quickly prepare the proper treatment.
When the treatment is completed, the ticket is closed in the system. All data is recorded statistically and can be processed via an Excel report. This allows hospital managers to analyse patient wait times and other data to determine how efficiently the Emergency Centre is running.
Meeting challenges
Onechallenge in developing the ticket system was exchanging information betweenthe server, displays, and printer.
To address this issue, Aerne relied on RTI’sXP-3 control processor, creating two-way drivers for the server and the printer. When a doctor or nurse selects a patient to see, the XP-3 relays this information to the screens in the waiting room. If the printer runs out of paper, the XP-3 relays an alert to the server, where it is sent to the PC of the appropriate employee.
“While we typically rely on RTI for automation and control in AV systems, the company’s processors are more than capable of handling unique applications, such as a patient ticket system,” says Pascal Nyffenegger, systems integrator at Aerne Solutions. “The RTI platform allows for complete customisation to meet the needs of any project, and as an RTI driver developer I can make virtually any components communicate with each other. The result has been perfect for the Triemli City Hospital. They love their system and we’ve already gotten a request to extend it beyond the Emergency Centre.”