A Network-Enabled Platform for Reducing Hospital Emergency Department Waiting Times Using an RFID Proximity Location System

In this paper we describe a network-enabled platform for an application oriented to reducing hospital emergency room or emergency department waiting times. The platform itself is extensible, incorporating systems engineering practices and available resources, and is suitable for data collection and analysis opportunities such as those found in a networked aggregation of emergency departments or clinical settings. The content provided is described in general terms and reflects a healthcare related emergency room scenario. We demonstrate the efficacy and rationale of the platform within a service oriented architecture based framework for an RFID real time location system. Value added information mining is also indicated by extracting queuing parameters, thereby providing some degree of qualitative monitoring of service and waiting times that would otherwise be unavailable.