Imagine a scenario that occurs daily across the world: one hospital needs to transport an organ across town to another hospital where a transplant recipient is waiting. The receiving hospital is tracking its location to make sure everything is ready at the appropriate time. Then the van enters an urban canyon, tunnel or parking garage and its location is lost.
Whether an organ or other important or valuable asset, this scenario is repeated every day, leaving interested parties in the dark. Skyhook’s hybrid positioning system quickly provides precise location information using Wi-Fi, cell towers, GPS, and other data sources, and it is able to do so at low power – enabling the use of tiny devices, such as those envisioned with most IoT applications. So instead of tracking the vehicle transporting the organ, with Skyhook you can track the cooler.
IBM Watson IoT Platform can leverage Skyhook’s location data and other contextual information to take you from passively tracking asset location to actively managing asset movement, and because Skyhook enables the use of miniature tracking devices, you can monitor more than just location. For instance, you can use sensors to measure the temperature within the cooler, with Watson IoT monitoring the data and alerting the appropriate staff if the temperature reaches a critical level.
IBM Watson IoT Platform can monitor traffic in real-time, proactively rerouting your asset for the quickest possible delivery. If beacons are installed in the facility, Skyhook can track the cooler within the hospital and, with hooks into the building automation, Watson IoT can even hold an elevator as staff make their way through the hospital, all the while keeping the surgical team up to date on its ETA.
The animated video shows how Skyhook’s hybrid positioning system quickly provides precise location information using Wi-Fi, cell towers, GPS, and other data sources, and it is able to do so at low power; enabling the use of tiny devices, such as those envisioned with most IoT applications. IBM Watson IoT Platform leverages Skyhook’s location data and other contextual information, giving you the ability to go from passively monitoring asset location to actively managing asset movement.
Watch the video:
Learn more:
- For more information, go to IBM.com/iot
- Discover Skyhook’s IoT Location solutions
- Attend the Skyhook & IBM webinar entitled, ‘Where’s my Asset?’
- Try out the Skyhook Precision Location for IoT Recipe
- Watch the How to tutorial Demo: Skyhook Precision Location for IoT video.
This article was written by Karen Lewis and was originally published on the IBM IoT blog in November 2016.
