Information Technology Reference
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and the right use of RFID. Keeping in mind that
RFID does not require line-of-sight, applications
developed with the use of this technology can
provide significant plus points to the healthcare
industry by making way for better facilities, im-
proving patient safety, reducing medical errors,
saving costs and delivering quality care to patients.
Apart from no line-of-sight, RFID also provides
read/write capabilities for dynamic tracking of as-
sets and personnel. Numerous RFID applications
have been developed for hospitals and pharma-
cies through which both customers and patients
can be benefitted. In healthcare, the use of RFID
is applied to either people or objects, which are
discussed in the following sections of the chapter.
Room increases as many x-rays of the patient
are required. At times, hospital staff may even to
have x-ray every patient who underwent any open
cavity surgery to find missing surgical items, un-
necessarily exposing the patients to radiation. The
use of RFID technology prevents such outbreaks
by ensuring the surgical instruments and a sponge
are not misplaced during the surgery, either inside
the body of a patient or in a waste container and
it also tracks the use, maintenance and status of
the instruments.
Traceability of medicines from the suppliers
to pharmacy to hospital and lastly to patients is
as important as tracking hospital equipment. Sup-
pliers and hospitals have been trying for a long
time to deter drug counterfeiting and discourage
fake/adulterated/tampered medicines. The advent
of RFID technology has automated the manual
record keeping of drug delivery for patient care
and minimized work load for the pharmacy and
hospital personnel. RFID enabled item level
tracking systems combined with sensor technol-
ogy have greatly increased drug visibility within
pharmacies and hospitals, thereby decreasing the
number of lost/spoiled/expired drugs.
Following are examples of different RFID
based solutions wherein the use of RFID is ap-
plied to objects:
RFID Applied to Objects
In a typical healthcare environment, it is much
needed to track assets as they need to be used
before they expire and update their inventory
status so that they can be ordered with enough
lead time and are always available in stock during
an emergency. Tracking of assets in hospitals can
improve productivity; reduce costs by implement-
ing automatic maintenance schedules; increase
revenue by accurately valuing the assets being
used and increase equipment longevity usage
patterns. RFID enables automatic collection of
information including the location, maintenance
status, etc. without requiring a direct line-of-sight
or any kind of contact with the item.
Asset tracking is a necessity during surgeries
where each item should be accounted for, so that
the items are not left behind in the patient's body.
Items that are left behind are commonly called
'retained foreign objects' which can lead to inflam-
mation, obstruction, perforation, sepsis or at times
even death. During surgeries, nurses are unable to
provide full support to surgeons because they are
busy counting surgical instruments and sponges at
the same time, thereby leading to miscounts and
surgical errors. Moreover, when such a medical
error is found, the time spent in the Operating
•
Assetrac is an example of RFID asset
tracking system used by several US hos-
pitals for protecting, tracking and locat-
ing hospital equipment. In this system,
each item that needs to be tracked has an
RFID tag fixed to it and a centralized serv-
er holds the information about the item's
status. RFID readers are placed within the
premises (refer Figure 3) to read and locate
tagged items and also update their status in
the centralized database. The system trig-
gers an alarm whenever any item goes out
of the designated perimeter or when the
tag itself is removed from the equipment
(Lieshout et al., 2007, p.117).
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