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In-Depth Information
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ORLocate, an RFID enabled system, has
recently obtained clearance from the US
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for
its surgical sponge and instrument tracking
technology. This system consists of tagged
surgical instruments and sponges placed in
an RFID enabled back tray which stores a
stack of trays with surgical instruments, an
RFID enabled Mayo tray that detects the
presence of instruments, a handheld RFID
reader to locate missing items, a desktop
reader to check if the instruments are steril-
ized after a surgical procedure and anten-
nas located near the Mayo tray to identify
when and how many new sponges and in-
struments are added to the tray during the
surgery. Low frequency tags are used as
they can be read easily in environments
containing large quantities of metal and
liquids and they can also easily sustain at
least 1000 sterilization procedures. The
manufactures promise that the designed
system guarantees patient safety, reduces
manual counts and risk of surgical mis-
takes, saves time and also reduces shrink-
age (Swedberg, 2010).
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Jena University Hospital along with Intel
successfully tested a system to track medi-
cation provided from the hospital's phar-
macy to the patient in the intensive care
unit. An RFID tag is placed on the indi-
vidual dose of medication and also on the
boxes containing bottles of medication.
All the information on the tag is read by
a reader and stored on a computer sys-
tem along with the patient's information
before the medicine leaves the pharmacy.
These medicines are scanned again at the
destined hospital unit to update the infor-
mation on the computer server before the
medicine is delivered to the patient. Once
the medicine is given to the patient, infor-
mation about the nurse who administered
and the type of medication is stored in the
patient's RFID enabled wristband. The
system thus provides a better way to cross
check the medication and patient ID to en-
sure that the medicine is given to the right
patient (Lieshout et al., 2007, p.178).
Figure 3. Functionality of Assetrac system
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