Medical Gas Solutions (MGS), part of the Flogas group of companies, uses medical gas cylinder tracking to
supply emergency services and NHS trusts with gases like oxygen and nitronox, essential to save lives and reduce pain in a wide range of emergency, pre- and post-operative situations.
As well as offering products for sale, MGS provides a managed service in which cylinders are returned for refill and inspected and serviced as required. The company wanted a better system to keep track of cylinders, one that would save costs for customers by
reducing cylinder loss and optimise cylinder usage.
MGS approached CoreRFID with its plans to tag cylinders electronically. CoreRFID helped select the most appropriate tagging mechanism and designed a bespoke medical gas cylinder tracking system that keeps track of cylinders and gives MGS’s customers visibility of cylinder location and usage.
“The CoreRFID system has overcome the problems we had in the past. Now our RFID tagged cylinders are tracked accurately and we can deliver the service we planned for our customers.”
– Dave Donlan, Operations Manager, Medical Gas Solutions.
Medical gas cylinder tracking: tags enable easy identification
Medical Gas Solutions was set up in 2003 to provide a UK-wide supply of medical gases for emergency use. Since then the company has worked with a broad range of healthcare professionals including the ambulance, fire and police service, Hazardous Area Response Teams (HART), St John Ambulance, doctors, dentists, nurses and midwives, delivering analgesic and resuscitation kits.
MGS has a track record in innovative products. It was the first to introduce an ultra-lightweight one-litre high-pressure medical gas cylinder for use by rapid response units and paramedics, and also developed the multi-patient unit that can deliver gas to multiple casualties to help cope with major incidents.
To track and manage the return of cylinders for its managed service, MGS decided on a tagging approach that allowed cylinders to be tracked to delivery locations and identified immediately on return. From the data collected, MGS expected to pass on a number of benefits to customers, including usage information to support planning and budgeting, visibility of stockholding by gas type and site, and reduced cylinder losses.
How medical gas cylinder tracking overcame problems with a previous system
The company had already trialled a system but experienced a number of problems, including duplicate data and other database issues, a lack of real-time data, difficulties reading tags, and difficulties accessing and providing the correct information to customers. To overcome these problems, MGS asked CoreRFID to build a custom system that would meet its original objectives.
Monitoring the full cycle: from filling to despatch and return
The CoreRFID solution supports three main activities with the cylinders:
- Filling, where batch details, cylinder serial number, owner, date of filling and expiry are recorded in a database and linked to the cylinder using tag data.
- Distribution, where the customer name, location and cylinder number are collected, alongside an audit of all cylinders held at a particular location.
- Service, where any cylinder failing an inspection is given an out-of-service status, preventing it being put back into use until overridden by service staff after a successful check.
Tags are read by workers on site using mobile phones or handheld devices, which display details of the cylinder being checked and the actions needed. To overcome previous problems with data reliability, an update system was built to automatically sync data from the various handheld devices used to collect it.
Data syncs over a GPRS data network when a signal is available, or via MGS’s own network by plugging handheld devices into a cradle at the end of the day. Information reaches customers and MGS staff through the cloud-based system CoreRFID operates on MGS’s behalf, which also provides a wide range of reports and enquiries on the status and availability of cylinders.
The bespoke system has since been upgraded, and now runs entirely on barcode tagging, giving MGS a single, consistent way to identify every cylinder in circulation.
The MGS system is based on CoreRFID’s CheckedOK solution, widely used by companies servicing safety and survival equipment such as life rafts and fire extinguishers.
A simple user interface lets staff enter data on collections, deliveries, fillings, inspections and other tasks easily, improving the accuracy of the process. The same applies to the web interface used by the data portal, which offers flexibility in report layout and content and lets data be filtered by location or company.
The benefits
- Accurate data on cylinder locations and status for MGS staff and customers
- Data for customer usage planning
- Warnings where cylinders, valves or gas fillings have passed their expiry date
- Easily implemented audits to track cylinder locations, saving costs and reducing the risk of out-of-date cylinders or gases being used