Supporting Nurses’ Work and Improving Medical Safety Using a Sensor Network System in Hospitals

New electrical medical instruments can report their status, which will improve the accuracy of electronic medical records (EMR) and reduce nurses’ workload. Processing the data collected and providing feedback to nurses in real-time will reduce medical errors. We designed a sensor network system that uses Bluetooth to communicate with medical instruments to collect information on where, how, and by whom an instrument is being used. This should detect errors in instrument settings by comparing the data collected with the physician’s order, and alerting nurses to any errors. This paper discusses our system, which was evaluated by interviewing nurses.