Healthcare Asset Management – The Secret to Unlocking Cost Efficiency and Improving Operations

With over 6,120 hospitals in the US participating in the coveted race to become a part of the $1,779.00 billion market volume by the end of 2029, the talks around digitalization have placed themselves in the front seat.

But have hospitals truly caught the essence?

Being a healthcare digital transformation service provider since the past decade, if you ask our views, we would say that in its current state, a majority of hospitals are approaching digitalization with a wide-angle lens view. Sure they are investing in making patient-centric solutions like teleconsultation, health tracking, reminder apps and even software to streamline their processes such as EHR, and Hospital Management Software, but amidst this, one domain is often left ignored – Healthcare asset management.

Having effective and correctly functioning assets on hand 24*7 is life critical for the healthcare sector. With a proper digital asset management software in place, hospitals can easily trace and locate assets when they are not available and would have gone missing. Moreover, asset management in healthcare solutions play a critical role in ensuring that all the critical equipment inside your hospital is well-maintained, tested, and maintained in a reliable working condition all the time.

If we had to list down the pros of implementing a health assets management tool in your healthcare unit, it would look like this:

• Allows staff to swiftly and easily find medical equipment in real-time
• Lowers the procurement cost to change lost or stolen medical equipment
• Tracks an asset’s ROI and records its true value
• Ensures correct usage and performance data of your medical assets
• Improves inventory management and correctness
• Use physical space and organized equipment storage effectively

Understanding Healthcare Asset Management

Asset management software for hospitals follows a comprehensive approach that enables hospitals to track, maintain, and optimize the use of their assets. Assets which range from critical medical devices to IT systems and facility infrastructure.

Health service asset management systems allow hospitals to streamline their operations by providing real-time tracking, automating maintenance schedules, and ensuring efficient asset utilization. How, you may ask? Through a well-strategized set of key features.

Key Features and Functionalities of HAM Systems

Modern health services asset management solutions offer a range of functionalities that drive operational efficiency, including:

Real-Time Asset Tracking: Constant visibility of equipment and assets across all departments.

Automated Maintenance Scheduling: Ensuring regular maintenance checks to avoid unexpected breakdowns.

Inventory Management: Monitoring supply levels in real-time to prevent over-ordering or shortages.

Utilization Reporting: Data-driven insights into how assets are being used, helping hospitals optimize equipment distribution.

Compliance Management: Automated schedules for equipment checks and sanitization to meet regulatory standards.

By incorporating these features, asset management healthcare software provides hospitals with the tools they need to improve efficiency and deliver better patient care, as also evident with the growing market size.

However, are these functionalities and perceptions around enterprise asset management healthcare reason enough for hospitals to invest in the software set? Well definitely not. And this is why we have listed a range of healthcare asset management benefits in the next section.

The Less Talked About Healthcare Asset Management Benefits

Tracking and managing healthcare assets on a 24*7 basis is not just critical for bettering assets, healthcare unit efficiency but also patients’ lives.  Here are some of the top advantages that cements the importance of healthcare asset management implementation.

Increased Operational Efficiency

By automating asset tracking and maintenance schedules, hospital asset management systems tend to massively reduce manual efforts. This automation offered by BPM in healthcare also ensures that assets are always in optimal condition and easily located, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on patient care.

Enhanced Patient Safety and Satisfaction

When assets are well-maintained and readily available, it improves both the quality and speed of patient care. Such a high level of readiness also leads to better patient outcomes and higher satisfaction levels, as equipment is available when needed without delays.

Regulatory Compliance

Irrespective of which region your hospital is operating out of, it is critical for it to meet strict compliance standards, set up by regulatory bodies, related to equipment safety and maintenance. Medical device asset management systems help hospitals maintain compliance by automatically scheduling equipment checks and maintenance, thus reducing the risk of non-compliance.

Also Read: How to build software for medical devices? Process, costs, types, and more

Cost Savings

The impact of healthcare asset management can also be seen through the prevention of asset loss and over-purchasing, resulting in reduced costs. Through better equipment utilization, hospitals can maximize their return on investment while extending the lifespan of their assets.

Data-Driven Insights

The data provided by asset management healthcare systems on asset usage helps hospitals make informed decisions on future investments. By analyzing trends, hospitals can better predict asset needs and allocate resources more efficiently.

While these are simply high-level healthcare asset management benefits, one common pattern that you will see emerging the deeper you dive into the HAM space is its direct impact on operations efficiency and cost saving.

Let us segregate and explore both the benefits clusters next.

The Impact of Healthcare Asset Management on Operations

Enhanced Workflow Efficiency

Healthcare asset management systems streamline daily hospital operations, significantly cutting down the time wasted on locating critical equipment. Nurses and other staff often spend unnecessary hours searching for tools or devices, taking away from their patient care duties and now with a centralized enterprise asset management healthcare system that tracks every asset, healthcare professionals can focus on what truly matters: patient care. This enhancement in workflow also guarantees smoother operations and quicker decision-making.

Real-Time Equipment Tracking

One of the most powerful features of asset management in healthcare is real-time equipment tracking. Hospitals can instantly locate critical medical devices, reducing delays, especially during emergencies. This real-time visibility also enables better coordination between departments, ensuring that the equipment is shared efficiently, the risk of downtime is minimized, and ultimately the operational flow gets improved.

Improved Patient Care

When the healthcare assets are properly managed and promptly available, patient care improves significantly as the doctors and nurses can provide faster treatment, using equipment that is not only available but also maintained and functional to their best optimal condition. This leads to better patient outcomes, increased hospital performance, and a more positive patient experience led by timely and effective care.

Compliance and Safety

Compliance with safety standards and regulations is a crucial concern for hospitals. Automated maintenance schedules in systems built for asset management software for hospitals ensure that all equipment is routinely serviced and sanitized, reducing the risk of malfunctions or infections caused by poorly maintained devices. This proactive approach, in turn, contributes to better regulatory compliance, enhanced patient safety, and avoidance of costly penalties.

Cost-Saving Benefits of Healthcare Asset Management

Reduction in Equipment Loss

Hospitals often struggle with lost or misplaced equipment, leading to unnecessary reordering and inflated procurement costs. With real-time tracking in place within a health services asset management platform, these assets can be easily located, ensuring that expensive devices aren’t misplaced or stolen. This capability also reduces the need for frequent replacements and helps healthcare providers save substantially on equipment costs.

Lower Maintenance Costs

Hospital asset management systems allow hospitals to schedule regular maintenance for their equipment, preventing costly breakdowns and emergency repairs. Routine servicing not only keeps devices in optimal condition but also extends their lifespan – all the while significantly cutting down on emergency repair costs and ensuring smoother day-to-day operations.

Optimized Equipment Utilization

Efficient asset management ensures that all the hospital equipment is utilized to its fullest capacity. Instead of having equipment sit idle or underutilized, digital asset management healthcare systems enable hospitals to distribute and allocate resources more efficiently. This reduces the need for unnecessary purchases and ensures that the current assets deliver maximum ROI.

Improved Inventory Management

By tracking inventory in real-time, hospitals can avoid overstocking supplies or running out of critical items. With health service asset management, hospitals can predict when to reorder based on current usage patterns, reducing wastage and ensuring that they have the necessary resources on hand without overburdening storage capacity.

Also Read: Hospital inventory management software development – Navigating the what, why and how for enterprises

Decreased Operational Overhead

Another one of the benefits of asset management is a reduction in operational overhead. When staff no longer need to spend time locating equipment, their productivity increases and with a software in place to improve asset availability and distribution, hospitals can allocate resources more efficiently, leading to lower labor costs and higher overall efficiency.

While on one side of the coin there is this list of healthcare asset management benefits, which give hospital units reasons to invest in HAM, there’s another side to this, which makes decision-taking easy – the way asset management in the healthcare space is developing through next-gen technologies.

How New-Generation Technologies are Impacting Healthcare Asset Management

Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and IoT are transforming the landscape of healthcare asset management. At Appinventiv, we believe that these innovations carry the capabilities to enhance efficiency, security, and predictive capabilities, taking asset management software for hospitals to new unexplored levels of efficiency.

Artificial Intelligence

AI-driven analytics offer predictive maintenance capabilities by analyzing usage patterns and predicting when equipment is likely to fail. This reduces downtime and allows hospitals to proactively schedule repairs, ensuring equipment is always available for use.

Blockchain

Blockchain technology offers an added layer of security to HAM by providing a decentralized, tamper-proof ledger for all asset transactions. This makes it easier to track high-value assets, reduces fraud, and ensures accountability within the system.

Internet of Things

IoT-enabled devices provide real-time monitoring of equipment performance and location. Sensors attached to assets allow hospitals to track their usage and condition continuously, leading to more efficient asset utilization and real-time decision-making.

While these technologies and a properly functioning health services asset management tend to offer numerous benefits, the software’s implementation also comes with challenges, particularly during the implementation phase.

Challenges in Healthcare Asset Management

Despite the numerous advantages, hospitals might face several challenges of healthcare asset management when it comes to implementation. Manual tracking of assets can be highly inefficient, prone to human error, and time-consuming. To make matters worse, many hospitals still rely on outdated systems, making it difficult to manage vast inventories and track assets in real-time.

At Appinventiv, one of the most repeatedly emerging concerns of our HAM clients is the presence of legacy systems. For entrepreneurs developing hospital asset management tools, integration with existing hospital infrastructure becomes a key issue. Many hospitals already have systems in place that may not easily communicate with newer technologies, so ensuring a seamless integration, along with providing adequate training for staff, becomes critical to the success of any asset management solution.

Checkout this exciting guide to modernizing healthcare legacy systems

Ultimately, we have experiences that addressing these pain points right at the early stage of the digital asset management healthcare development can help create more intuitive, adaptable systems.

Another way we approach the challenges of healthcare asset management is by making a list of issues. While I understand that it can look different for different hospitals, the similar issues remain the same.

Manual Tracking and Outdated Systems:

Many hospitals still rely on manual methods for tracking assets, which are prone to errors and inefficiency. Transitioning from these outdated systems to a fully automated medical device asset management solution can be challenging.

Integration with Existing Systems:

Digital asset management healthcare tools need to integrate seamlessly with other hospital systems such as electronic health records and facility management platforms. A poorly integrated network can lead to data silos and workflow disruptions.

User Training:

Introducing new technologies requires extensive user training to ensure staff can effectively use the system. Without proper training, the perceived impact of healthcare asset management tools may not translate into the delivery of expected benefits.

We always emphasize how for entrepreneurs developing asset management in healthcare solutions, addressing these challenges early on can make the transition smoother for healthcare providers. But we do understand that it’s not easy, especially when the HAM provider is looking to brand themselves by partnering with healthcare units.

This is where Appinventiv steps in. By being a trusted custom healthcare software development company, we come with a track record of deploying HAM – both for individual hospitals and as a white-label solution – an experience set that has enabled us to digitalize assets management for a range of healthcare units.

Beside our expertise, healthcare units tend to partner with us because of our futuristic outlook when building asset management in healthcare.

Appinventiv Focus: Future Trends in Healthcare Asset Management

Innovations such as AI, blockchain, and IoT are just the beginning of the technological advancements in HAM, there are several other aspects that are shaping the future of healthcare asset management.

Predictive Analytics

With the growing use of AI,predictive analytics will play a larger role in the importance of healthcare asset management. Hospitals will be able to anticipate asset needs, predict equipment failures, and optimize inventory levels with unprecedented accuracy.

Increased Automation

Healthcare automation will continue to streamline operations, with AI-powered tools taking over tasks such as scheduling maintenance, tracking inventory, and distributing equipment across departments.

Greater IoT Integration

The use of IoT will expand, with even more devices being connected to HAM systems. This will provide real-time data on virtually every asset in the hospital, enabling even greater efficiency in equipment management.

As these trends evolve, the demand for innovative HAM solutions, driven by the healthcare asset management benefits  will only grow, presenting opportunities for entrepreneurs and healthcare providers alike to develop the next generation of asset management tools.

We are ready to become a part of your HAM explorative and implementation journey. Get in touch with our team of healthtech-specialist developers.

FAQs

Q. What is Healthcare Asset Management?

A. Healthcare Asset Management refers to the process of tracking, managing, and maintaining physical assets in a healthcare facility, such as medical equipment, IT infrastructure, and supplies. It helps ensure optimal use, maintenance, and lifespan of the assets, while minimizing downtime and associated costs.

Q. What is the role of asset management in Healthcare?

A. The role of asset management in healthcare is to optimize the usage and maintenance of medical equipment and other resources, ensuring that they are available when needed and functioning efficiently. It plays a crucial role in reducing operational costs, improving patient care, and ensuring compliance with regulatory standards.

Q. What are the use cases of asset management in Healthcare?

A. Some common use cases of healthcare asset management include:

• Tracking medical devices and equipment to prevent loss or theft.
• Scheduling preventive maintenance to reduce equipment downtime.
• Managing the inventory of medical supplies to avoid shortages or overstocking.
• Enhancing compliance by monitoring the status and certification of assets.

Q. What are some top examples of healthcare asset management?

A. Examples of healthcare asset management systems can include:

RFID or Barcode Tracking Systems –  Used for real-time tracking of medical equipment and supplies.

Computerized Maintenance Management System – For scheduling and tracking equipment maintenance and repairs.

IoT-enabled Asset Management Solutions – These leverage sensors and connected devices to monitor equipment usage, location, and condition remotely.

THE AUTHOR

Amardeep Rawat

Co-Founder and Director