Market consultation hospital AZ Oostende 'Time registrations on Emergency Department with smart tracking'

Purpose of the project

Today, patient movements and treatment phases in the emergency department are registered manually. Due to the high-paced and often unpredictable nature of emergency care, these registrations can be incomplete or inaccurate. This impacts both the quality of patient tracking and the ability to gain clear insights into care pathways.

The project aims to develop a real-time location system (RTLS) that automatically records each patient’s movements through the emergency department by linking tags to patients. This system should:

• Provide accurate and up-to-date timestamps for each stage of the patient’s treatment process
• Minimize the administrative burden on healthcare providers, allowing more time for patient care.
• Offer data collection and analytics capabilities to identify bottlenecks and improve operational efficiency.

The intended innovation focuses on the integration of real-time location tracking, automated patient–tag linkage, and intelligent care interaction logging within the emergency department to enable a more accurate, timely, and efficient coordination of care workflows. This should lead to a reduction in administrative overhead, fewer manual registration errors, improved patient safety, and enhanced operational transparency across the entire acute care pathway.

The current hypothesis is that no fully integrated solution exists on the market, and combining available technologies into a seamless system remains challenging. AZ Oostende seeks the expertise and vision of market parties to explore potential solution architectures, validate technical feasibility, and identify the most promising approaches for a future-proof implementation.

Purpose of the market consultation

The aim of the market consultation is to align the organization’s needs with (partial) solutions currently available on the market. It seeks to evaluate to what extent companies can address the identified use cases. Insights and feedback from participating vendors will be used to inform the preparation of the public procurement procedure for a Proof-of-Concept (PoC). The results of the consultation will subsequently be published via the PIO project page.

The open market consultation consists of three main components:

• An explanation of the challenge, followed by an interactive group discussion around the already identified use cases and any potentially missing ones;
• A brainstorming session focused on possible combinations of partial solutions that together could form a complete solution;
• A presentation of the intended assignment by the contracting authority, followed by an interactive group discussion.

During the event, participants will be invited to share reflections and engage in dialogue with other attendees. Together with experts and technology partners, you will explore innovative solutions for smart tracking and time registration in emergency care. This co-creative setting offers opportunities to contribute to systems that improve patient flow and care quality, while also allowing you to forge valuable connections, exchange knowledge, and influence future tenders.  

No preparation (such as presentations, pitches, etc.) is expected from participating companies and organizations.

Two weeks after the market consultation, interested parties will be offered the opportunity for a one-on-one online meeting with AZ Oostende on 27 and 28 October. The discussion topics and preparatory questions will be shared after registration.

We hope the market consultation will lead to all relevant information, needed to launch a successfull tender to purchase a solution that can address the challenges related to smart tracking and time registration in emergency care.

Who are we looking for?

We are looking for enterprises, research centers, and knowledge institutions with expertise, experience, or insights in the field of real-time location systems (RTLS), smart tracking, and digital patient flow management in the broadest sense.

This includes, among others, sensor and beacon technologies, wearable or embedded patient and staff identification systems, interoperability with hospital information systems, automated interaction logging, privacy-by-design, and intelligent alerting based on context-aware rules.

We welcome both organizations with existing commercial solutions and those with solutions in development, from within and beyond the medical or healthcare sectors. 

Where and when?

The market consultation will take place in person on Monday, 13 October 2025, at AZ Oostende (auditorium Damiaan, Gouwelozestraat 100, 8400 Oostende).

If there are participants who do not speak Dutch, the market consultation will be held in English.

Can't make it on 13 October? Then keep an eye on the project page. The results of the market consultation will be made publicly available there.

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