Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
TaBLe 15.2
Cases of RFID Being Adopted in Healthcare Industry
Hospital
Application
Reference
Johns Hopkins Medical
Center
RFID monitors injection liquid bag for
enough medicine to prevent air going into
patient's body.
24
Georgetown University
Hospital
RFID tracks blood products from donor to
patient.
9
M D Anderson Cancer
Center
Tagging drugs with radio chips, RFID
ensures the cancer drug safety.
11
to RFID. This study concludes the four traits for medical RFID application:
(1) identification, tracking, and location in health care facilities; (2) identifica-
tion of implantable medical devices; (3) access control in health care facilities;
and (4) product packaging. From the literature review, it points out that some
hospitals are utilizing RFID for tracking injection IV bags, blood bags, can-
cer medicine, and tracking wounded soldiers and treatments. But, there is a
few hospitals that have applied RFID for emergency room workflow manage-
ment. However, an emergency room is exactly the place that needs RFID-
enabled resource to prevent medical errors and keep higher patient safety
service quality. This study tends to explore the related issues of RFID-based
information system managing both emergency room workflow and medical
care service.
15.3 Emergency Room Problems: Case Description
Municipal Wan-Fang Hospital (WF hospital), which is a teaching medical
center located in Taipei, Taiwan, and is affiliated with Taipei Medical
University. This study portrays the emergency room problems as follows.
When patients flood into the emergency room, waiting rooms for treatment,
trauma, and critically ill patients need treatment in the shortest possible
time. A large volume of unexpected patients arriving at the emergency room
simultaneously would possibly cause medical staffs to commit negligence
or malpractice by providing the wrong injection, medication, anesthesia, or
even surgery. According to emergency room practices, this study proposed
some deficiencies that need to be solved:
•
Long waiting at emergency room causes patients delay in receiving
prompt treatment and endangers their chances of recovery.
Delay of medical staff in observation and treatment of critical triage
•
level L1 or L2 patients due to the large volume of patients arriving at
the emergency room for treatment.
