Case Study: The Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown

Pace carts with InnerSpace Cloud security services are a winning combination for leading cancer care facility

The Winship Cancer Institute at Emory Midtown is a 450,000 square-foot facility that provides world-class, comprehensive cancer care in a unique, patient-centric model, combining adult inpatient and outpatient care in one comfortable, convenient setting.

This state-of-the-art, innovative cancer center required an equally innovative system for storing, managing, and transporting valuable medical supplies in a secure, trackable way. The outpatient infusion department’s infusion rooms have all been outfitted with InnerSpace Pace carts and InnerSpace Cloud security services.

Senior Project Coordinator Elliot Aronson manages a real-time locating system that he has found partners well with managing the InterConnect lock system. Carts are taken to a central supply room where they are restocked with supplies for the next day and then locked until staff retrieves their carts. He notes that the centralized approach has been a timesaver and allows staff to tend to patients rather than track down supplies. And Winship at Emory Midtown is seeing financial benefits, too, as they are reducing the use of unnecessary amounts of supplies.

Aronson says that leading up to the decision to select InnerSpace Cloud security services, Winship at Emory Midtown was experiencing some challenges with accurately tracking and itemizing supplies, raising security concerns about who was accessing a cart and whether that person’s access was logical ? were the staff members who had the access the ones who needed those supplies?

Now, Aronson is able to track the 143 staff members accessing Pace carts using the InnerSpace Cloud dashboard. “The cloud system is great because I can access information from anywhere, any computer,” he says. “And there are significant benefits to a cloud-based system at a cart fleet or facility level. That’s a big value-add to apply our security standards consistently across so many locations.” Aronson can also individually assign the level of security and who has access to what.

There were other features of the InterConnect lock system that appealed to decision-makers at Winship at Emory Midtown. First, explains Aronson, they selected InterConnect for its ease of use and the lock’s technologically advanced programming. “For our organization, RFID was important, since we use badges to access rooms across the building, computers, and now supplies. And there’s no risk of losing a key or forgetting a PIN.”

Training on the InterConnect locks and InnerSpace Cloud includes onsite and on-demand training with support from the InnerSpace Technology team. Team members were onsite to set up the locks and connect them to Winship at Emory Midtown’s network. Locks were approved by the IT department to ensure they were in compliance with the organization’s requirements. Once locks were connected, the Technology team applied custom settings to the Winship’s entire fleet of Pace carts.

“We trained Elliot on the program and its features, from logging access and reporting to adding and deleting users,” says Mark McClusky, Vice President of InnerSpace Product Technology. “Elliot now has the ability to email staff members with instructions on how to set up their badges and operate the locks. This is a bigtime savings for Elliot in managing the program.”

After nearly a year of using InterConnect locks, Aronson is sold. “If someone is interested in saving time, improving ease of use for staff, and keeping auditable access records, it’s definitely worth considering InterConnect locks. Everything is tracked, so I better understand supply usage.” He hopes the success the outpatient infusion department has had with the lock system will prompt other departments at Winship at Emory Midtown to adopt use of InterConnect locks. “Hopefully, we’ll expand use within Emory as a whole.”

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