Hospital linen management
with RFID

Hospital linen management is how a hospital, or the laundry that serves it, keeps track of its linen and garments: how much there is, where it is, how often it has been washed and when it needs replacing. It can run on manual counts and delivery notes. With RFID, every piece is identified automatically at fixed read points, so balances per ward and hospital, wash counts and losses come from reads instead of estimates.

Medical linen management covers the textiles used in hospitals and care facilities: bed linen, towels, patient gowns, scrubs and staff garments. RFID helps by counting them in bulk at intake and dispatch and by giving each piece its own history. The laundry sees what went to which ward and what came back, and purchasing can plan replacement on actual use.

Three things work together: a washable tag in the textile, read points where linen changes hands, and software that turns reads into records. Each time a piece passes a read point, the software notes the time, the place and what that means, such as returned from a ward or delivered to a hospital. Between read points, the record shows where the piece was last seen.

Yes, if they are laundry tags made for industrial processing. Saphire One is designed for 200 industrial wash cycles, 60 bar in the extraction press and sterilisation at 134 °C, and it is certified to OEKO-TEX Standard 100, product class I. If your process has other requirements, ask us which tag fits. We test the tag on your textiles and in your processes before anything is ordered.

Yes. Scrubs are one of the textile types Saphire One is used for. Where scrubs are issued to one person, each set can be linked to a wearer; where they are pooled, the record is kept per size and per department, so you see what is in circulation and what is running short. We can connect our tags to scrub dispensing cabinets and supply the cabinet and the software as well.

Yes, that is one of the main reasons healthcare laundries use UHF RFID. Tags are read without line of sight, so a portal or tunnel at soiled intake counts a closed bag or a full cart in one pass. Dense loads and metal carts make this harder, so the configuration and position of the read point are tested with your bags and carts before rollout. Reading in bulk also means nobody has to handle used linen piece by piece, so staff are not hurt by sharp objects left in the textiles. Infectious and isolation linen goes through the same read as every other load.

Read points on the soiled side and on the clean side are set up as separate stations, and each read is booked to its side. The record therefore shows whether a piece was last seen as returned or as clean and packed. RFID does not replace your hygiene process; it documents where each piece was in it.

Yes. Dispatch and return reads are booked to a ward and a hospital, so the software shows what each one has received, returned and still holds, per item type. A laundry serving several hospitals sees balances per customer; a hospital with its own laundry sees them per ward. You also see what has left dispatch and has not come back yet.

Besides Saphire One, we offer the GENX2 Tag, the Gamma Tag and the MRI Tag for specialised requirements. Tell us about your process and the areas the textiles are used in, and ask us which one fits. We test any tag on your textiles before you decide.

No. The tag carries only an ID number. The link to a ward, a hospital or a wearer lives in the software, so it can be changed when a garment is reassigned, and no personal data is stored on the tag. A care home that wants to track residents’ own clothing can collect the reads on its own server and link them to the tags there.

Item-level records show when each piece was received, processed and delivered, and to which ward or hospital. That can support your own documentation of the laundry process.

Saphire One is a passive UHF tag for 860 to 928 MHz. UHF reads many tags at once and over distance, which is what lets a tunnel or portal count a full cart in one pass. Read range is up to 12 m, based on EECC free-air testing under FCC conditions; actual read range depends on reader setup, tag orientation, textile arrangement and operating environment. Each read point is set up so it reads only what it should.

No. You can take the full system from us or only the part you are missing. If you already have tags or hardware, you can use our software on its own. If you want to start small, you can begin with three set-ups instead of all six reading stations and add the others later. The system check shows which parts you actually need.

It depends on how many pieces you tag, how many read points your laundry needs and what the dashboard has to cover, so there is no flat price. We look at your process in the system check and then make you an offer for your RFID set-up. Send us your volumes through our contact form.

RFID laundry tracking covers the whole laundry process for every textile type. RFID linen tracking focuses on flat linen and towels in any industry, with rental balances per customer. This page is about healthcare: linen and garments that move between wards and hospitals, a laundry with separate soiled and clean sides, scrubs and patient gowns, and sterilisation. The technology is the same; the read points, item types and questions differ.