The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center—Making Cancer History™ with the Help of TracerPlus

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center is one of the world’s most respected centers devoted exclusively to cancer patient care, research, education, and prevention. Their mission is as straightforward as it is ambitious: “to eliminate cancer in Texas, the nation, and the world through outstanding programs that integrate patient care, research and prevention, and through education for undergraduate and graduate students, trainees, professionals, employees, and the public.”

It takes a lot to bring this vision to fruition at what is, in fact, the largest cancer center in the world; among the values MD Anderson sets for itself are those they place, according to their website, under the rubric of “stewardship”: to “act responsibly to safeguard the institution’s finances” and to “ensure the proper care and use of time, data, materials, equipment and property afforded to us.” A big part of this aspect of stewardship is keeping track of the Center’s over 85,000 assets—everything from IT assets to cutting-edge medical equipment worth many thousands of dollars.  

As MD Anderson systems analyst Ken Martin says, “Without TracerPlus, I don’t think it could be done.”

As a member of the asset management team at MD Anderson, Ken speaks from experience. “We need to know where the assets are, where they go, and where they’ve been,” he explains. To accomplish this, he and his team use Zebra MC3300 handheld WiFi scanners loaded with TracerPlus, which uploads data directly to an SQL server database. The scanner technology and models have evolved over the years, but MD Anderson has been using TracerPlus since 2008 when their team first heard about the application from PTS representatives at the IAITAM (International Association of Information Technology Asset Management) conference.

The process that MD Anderson follows enables the instant location of valuable assets while ensuring accountability. When a member of MD Anderson’s staff moves a piece of equipment, they follow a three-step protocol in which they first scan their barcoded employee ID badge, then the barcode that accompanies every room number as marked with wall signage, and finally the equipment asset tag barcode.

Without any need for manual input, TracerPlus guards against human error. For a state-run and supervised facility, as MD Anderson is, TracerPlus’s ease of database integration is invaluable in providing precise answers in the event of an audit.

Like any U.S. medical facility, MD Anderson must also keep compliance with HIPAA regulations foremost in its considerations when transferring assets, as certain equipment can contain patient-sensitive data, or PHI [Protected Health Information]. Location information recorded via TracerPlus is essential to MD Anderson’s efforts to safeguard patient privacy.

How does the asset management team at MD Anderson view the efficiency that TracerPlus provides? As Ken puts it, “I'm handling 200-plus scanners loaded with TracerPlus. They scan, they do an upload, it writes it straight to the database and we pull the data straight from the database tables. There aren’t any spreadsheets or hard copies to deal with…so it’s efficient enough that I can handle the output of all those scanners with just one person.”

Ken also has high praise for TracerPlus’s ease of use. Though he was glad to have TracerPlus’s thorough user’s guide, “I didn’t need it,” he says. “Granted, I’m a developer, but you don’t need to be a programmer to be able to start using TracerPlus and create whatever you want to. I think anybody could pick it up and start doing it using the Connect feature.” And, he adds, if you want to try something new with the app, “the customer support is top notch—when I have a question, I get a solution within an hour.”

It’s the simplicity of TracerPlus that impressed him the most when he first encountered the app, and that he stresses in recommending it to any organization that needs to track assets. “If anyone is doing this kind of job manually, I would highly suggest that they go to TracerPlus. It’s a very easy tool to set up and use. You don’t have to be a data person, you just match—we have this field, match it to this field—boom, that’s it.”

To get started with TracerPlus, start a free trial or, contact us to help get you started.