Tracking hospital gear to save staff time

Hospitals lose time when staff have to hunt for a wheelchair, stretcher or specialty bed somewhere inside the building. Waterloo startup Technology Trace is selling software and sensors meant to show exactly where that gear is. (publicnow.com) The company’s platform, called trevii, uses small tags attached to equipment and a software dashboard that updates location and status in real time. The system is built for medical assets that move constantly between floors, units and storage rooms. (publicnow.com) (technologytraceinc.com) Technology Trace co-founders Michael Becker and Daniel Fischer, both Waterloo engineering alumni, say the bigger problem is not only finding gear but seeing how often it is actually used. Their pitch is that hospitals can tell whether an item is in use, idle or waiting to be cleaned instead of relying on manual counts. (publicnow.com) That matters because a hospital can manage thousands of mobile assets, from beds and wheelchairs to pumps, monitors and diagnostic devices. When visibility breaks down, staff search hallways and storage areas, and administrators can end up renting or buying replacements for equipment already on site. (publicnow.com) St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton began evaluating trevii in September 2024 for beds and stretchers, with support from Ontario Bioscience Innovation Organization’s Life Sciences Critical Technologies and Commercialization program. The hospital said the study was aimed at improving asset use, patient flow and capital purchasing decisions. (research.stjoes.ca) In November 2025, St. Joseph’s said it had adopted the platform for real-time equipment tracking after the pilot. The hospital described trevii as a “find my phone” style system for specialized medical equipment and said it was intended to cut wait times and improve worker efficiency. (research.stjoes.ca) The Waterloo profile published April 28 is less a new product launch than a snapshot of a local company moving from pilot work into hospital use. It also lands weeks after the university promoted separate research on cloud-connected robots that could move equipment and supplies through hospitals. (publicnow.com) (uwaterloo.ca) The common thread is staff time. Waterloo’s April 8 robotics release cited a global nursing shortfall of 5.8 million in 2023, projected to narrow to 4.1 million by 2030, as hospitals look for ways to shift routine logistics away from nurses and porters. (uwaterloo.ca) Technology Trace says its next step is wider hospital deployment, with the case built around fewer searches, better utilization data and fewer unnecessary purchases. The basic bet is simple: if staff can find the bed faster, the patient gets it faster too. (publicnow.com)