A transformation journey – not a tracking project

UFOUND, built on Columna Flow 

UMC Utrecht productised their solution under the name UFOUND.

UFOUND is built on a five-layer architecture. UMC Utrecht selected the bottom three layers themselves – sensors and tags, radio infrastructure, and a Wirepas mesh network with Fujitsu hardware – choosing flexibility, accuracy, and cost-effectiveness as their criteria. 

The top two layers come from Systematic: 

• Columna Flow IoT platform – collects, enriches, and exposes location and event data from any tracking technology 

• Columna Flow Search & Find – the application layer that gives clinical, technical, and management staff a real-time view of equipment 

Workflow automation extends what the data can do. When equipment status changes – when stock drops below par level on a specific ward, when a battery runs low, when a device leaves a defined zone – the system can trigger tasks or notifications automatically, routing them to the right team without manual handover. 

This open, multi-layer approach is deliberate. UMC Utrecht needed multi-vendor tracking technology, dedicated tags including a 3D-printed bespoke mount for their infusion pumps, and the freedom to evolve each layer independently. Columna Flow was selected because it sits comfortably above any tracking stack and integrates with the systems UMC Utrecht already runs – including their Ultimo asset management platform. 

Try before you buy

The way UMC Utrecht approached the project is, in itself, a playbook other hospitals can learn from. The UFOUND project and the Medical Devices as a Service programme were led with a deliberate, iterative method:

• Desk research and hospital visits to learn from peers, including UMC Groningen, before committing to a direction

• An experience centre on a vacant ward, where manufacturers were invited to demonstrate solutions and stakeholders from clinical, IT, and management teams could experience the problem and the options first-hand

• Pilots on two wards with clinical staff actively involved, to prevent a technology-push solution and surface practical problems early

• Iterative refinement of both processes and technology in collaboration with manufacturers

• Multi-disciplinary representation throughout the project lifecycle

• A clear, contained scope – start with the medical equipment service, expand from there

The experience centre was, in Esther's words, the project's turning point. Stakeholders from the wards, IT board, and management came and experienced the solution. It exposed technical gaps that manufacturers then improved. It built the cross-functional support the project needed to move forward. 

Live across two hospitals 

UFOUND is now live across two hospitals, with Flow Search & Find at its core. 

Deployment scale: 

• 131 unique floors covered 

• 110 gateways and 2,800 anchor points installed 

• 90 equipment types in scope 

• 5,500 devices tagged 

• Users across medical equipment service managers, technicians, and super-users on wards and in the operating room centre 

The operating room centre has emerged as the highest-benefit area. Previously, one anaesthesia assistant travelled across three operating room locations daily, searching for the equipment under his responsibility. With Search & Find, that work compresses into minutes. 

What the user research showed 

UMC Utrecht's rollout has been studied in detail. Dr Anneke Schouten, a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, conducted 27 interviews with stakeholders across UMC Utrecht and 20 hours of direct observation of staff using Search & Find – across the medical equipment service department, wards, the operating room centre, the ICU, and the IT department. 

She presented her findings in the same Systematic webinar as Esther. They included: 

UMC Utrecht chose to examine how staff actually work with the system, and to share what came out of it – including the parts that did not work well. That openness is what makes the story useful to other hospitals. 

Listening, learning, and shipping 

The research surfaced friction as well as success. UMC Utrecht and Systematic chose to share both. 

That choice matters. It reflects how the relationship works in practice – UMC Utrecht's user research feeds directly into Systematic's product roadmap, and changes ship in named releases.