Hey Reader,

The 4Ps of Location: Unlocking Workflow Automation

Imagine a hospital where every movement is optimized, every workflow streamlined, and every second counts. Welcome to the world of Care Traffic Control, where the 4Ps of location – Position, Proximity, Presence, and Possession – will revolutionize healthcare operations.

Why? Because with this kind of perception (percepts) we can automate any workflow. With workflow automation we can remove small pieces of delay over many jobs, tasks and subtasks, for many workflows repeated hundreds of times a day. Boom!💥

Key Points:

• There is a lot of RTLS, RFID and location tech out there
• Focusing on position missed the value of the other percepts
• Apple understood this with the AirTag (proximity)
• Evaluate location systems against all of the 4Ps

Context: Industries like manufacturing, logistics and supply chain have realized that precise tracking and workflow automation for their mobile workflows can streamline their processes and improve customer satisfaction. Healthcare is not that different when it comes to these mobile workflows. The instrumentation provided by these percepts allows tighter controls and improves the experience for everyone.

• Position: The location of something in a 3d coordinate system (Example is latitude, longitude and floor)
• Proximity: How close things are to each other (Source to target, e.g. A is within a 10ft radius from B)
• Possession: Who controls the physical access to something (A is persistently within 1m from B)
• Presence: What things at a particular location (A category, like person, as opposed to an instance, like Peter)

Example: Let's take one task, like a courier picking up an IV Pump to take it to be cleaned. I can used position to detect the arrival of the pump at the location that triggers the pickup. Proximity tells me that the courier is close to the pump. Presence (with position) says the courier is at the pickup location and possession shows pump is with the courier. All that in one task.

This should illustrate the power of location perception when we apply it to workflow automation. It starts with understanding the percepts you have in the systems you have right now. An assessment and inventory is a good place to get started. Let me help!

Until next week,

Paul E Zieske ​Location Based Services Consulting ​​​