Asset tagging for hospitals and clinics

Three constraints shape the choice, and they are not the ones that apply anywhere else.

Infection control. Tags must be non-porous and wipeable. Anodised aluminium and polyester both are. Nothing textured, nothing fabric-backed, nothing with an edge that traps residue.

Cleaning chemistry. Ward and theatre surfaces are wiped with alcohol, chlorine and quaternary compounds several times a day. Our aluminium tags hold good resistance to water, oils, common solvents and many industrial chemicals, though resistance varies with concentration and exposure duration. For equipment in high-frequency wipe-down areas, acetone-activated aluminium is the safest specification.

Equipment surfaces. A lot of biomedical equipment has a powder-coated or moulded plastic shell with very little flat area. Our 39 × 13 mm tag at KSh 50 fits where a larger tag will not, and for genuinely awkward curved surfaces, flexible polyester from KSh 35 conforms where aluminium cannot sit flat.

For high-value portable equipment — infusion pumps, monitors, laptops — add tamper-evident tags. They are the only tag type that makes moving a tag between machines impossible.

Work ward by ward rather than attempting a facility-wide sweep. A hospital cannot pause, so the schedule has to fit around clinical activity: tag theatres during a maintenance window, wards during the quietest shift, and outpatient areas after hours.

Time the exercise before your insurance renewal or your annual audit, whichever comes first, and allow time to resolve discrepancies.

Public health facilities reporting under IPSAS carry the associated asset-record obligations, and county-level facilities sit inside the county's own asset register consolidation. Faith-based and private facilities carry the equivalent obligation under IFRS.

Separately, and often more urgently: donated and grant-funded equipment usually comes with a condition that it be recorded, identified and reported on. A tag number that does not appear in the donor's asset schedule is a compliance problem for the next funding round.