Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit and contact tracing became the norm in Singapore, Sengkang General Hospital (SKH) was already on the trail of people who came in close contact with those who had infectious diseases such as chicken pox and tuberculosis.
But instead of using Bluetooth tech like the Government's TraceTogether tool, SKH has been using a mix of radio-frequency identification (RFID) and Wi-Fi.
The hospital was able to cut down the time for contact tracing significantly by using tech.
Previously, one of the steps involved manually checking hospital and patient records, and liaising with various departments, which could take a few hours to a day.
But with SKH's contact tracing system, which it dubbed real-time locating system (RTLS), this process can be done in 10 to 20 minutes, it told The Straits Times.
The system was conceived even before SKH opened in 2018.
"We always knew that there was going to be another disease just around the corner after Sars," said Ms Lee Puay Chuan, the hospital's director for strategic projects, referring to the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak.
Sars claimed 33 lives in Singapore in four months at the time.
Hence, SKH's building plans factored in contact tracing, including installing devices called "exciters" and setting up Wi-Fi points around the hospital which are part of the RTLS.
The system was piloted with some patients in late 2018, before being rolled out in November the next year. All front-line staff, such as those in the emergency department, are now under the RTLS and it is being rolled out to back-office functions.
The timing was fortuitous as the RTLS has since been used to help the Ministry of Health with coronavirus contact tracing in SKH. The first recorded Covid-19 case in Singapore was in January last year.
SKH's system works by tracing the cards issued to hospital employees and wristband devices worn by patients. Using RFID tech, the cards and wristbands can "talk" to one another so that the RTLS can figure out those who come in close contact with an individual within a 2m range for a specified period of time.
The cards and wristbands regularly upload the close contact information through the hospital's Wi-Fi network to servers.
Based on the location information from exciters and Wi-Fi points, the RTLS will roughly know where staff and patients are in the hospital and where they go to.
TraceTogether also records close contact data but the difference is that it does not store location information, unlike the RTLS. Instead, TraceTogether data needs to be paired with the location data from the SafeEntry national check-in tool at venues for contact tracing.
The RTLS information is used during the contact tracing process to help jog people's memories of where they went, similar to how TraceTogether data is tapped.
According to Ms Lee, the RTLS has safeguards to protect the privacy of staff and patients.
The location information reveals only the hospital zone a person is in, such as wards, but not the washroom in a ward.
The RTLS data is accessed only when necessary, which in this case would be for infectious disease contact tracing. Access is restricted to specific personnel and there are audit trails on who retrieved the information.
The Wi-Fi network to upload the data is also secured and not public, assured Ms Lee.
The contact tracing data transmitted is coded and appears as a jumble of numbers.
Ms Lee said the RTLS is not just to protect patients by helping to quickly identify close contacts of infected people and limit the spread of a disease.
"Staff must also be assured that they are working in a safe environment," she added.
