RFID Tracking of Patients Offers Health Care Solutions

Hospitals make use of RFID technology to monitor patients. A Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is being used to improve medical industry. The most commonly used use is providing patients with wristbands with rfid inlay. These tags serve as an element of a hospital information system, which can be used to monitor in addition to:

Notifications when at-risk patients go beyond the boundaries of their designated areas - Every single day, hundreds of thousands of hospitals throughout the world are battling to eradicate mistakes in identification of patients. The failure to identify patients can cause significant issues, such as incorrect procedures for surgery, incorrect blood transfusions, lab analysis as well as medication delivery mixed up in nursery settings and many more.

For instance, medication errors they are among the most frequently made medical errors that harm at the very least 1.5 million people annually which results in a staggering 7,000 deaths. The hospital-related expenses of treating these injuries are conservatively to $3.5 billion per year. These figures don't include the loss of productivity and wages as well as the additional costs for health care and higher insurance costs. In cases where life is at stake, zero defect must be the norm.

According to RFID Journal The University of Florida's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has developed an RFID tag that is attached to a capsule of pills that can transmit information that indicates the pill is inside the body of an individual's digestive. "The issue is particularly prominent...in clinical trials, where pharmaceutical companies may be testing a specific medication, and the outcomes of these trials depend on participants who take the tested medication at precisely the right time and at the dosage that is prescribed for them."

The system, which includes the microchip, digestible antenna and software was created by a team made up of scientists from Florida University and also as Florida engineering and biomedical research company Convergent Engineering. The system has been tested on devices that imitate human bodies as well as on dead bodies. "The next stage for researchers," the article continues to state, "is to gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to start tests in the lab of the drug on humans and animals."

It is believed that the Seattle Fire Department is one of the numerous First Responder organizations testing the potential of RFID technology in the event of a mass casualty (MCI). The type of event could range from a large-scale fire or an incident that involves weapon that are of mass destruction. These events all involve an emergency situation where many patients have to be treated and taken to hospitals.

Numerous organizations are using triage tags, pen and white boards to track patients. Medical personnel assign a number the patient, take medical information , and runners hand it to a transportation officer. The transport officer then contacts the hospital and relays the information to the hospital. The process took in the average, over 30 seconds for each patient, not counting the delay in transporting patients.

Utilizing RFID technology , mobile computer systems and RFID allows medical data to be sent directly to trauma centers in real-time similar to the information gathered from EMS personnel. The new system tags are placed on the patient's body and then scans. The medical data is then entered into an LCD touch screen. This has cut down the time for triage to 10 seconds per patient, with patient information instantly accessible to everyone who needs it as well as the staff in the hospital.

The invention of RFID technology was spurred by the needs of large retailers such as Wal Mart, Target and also governmental agencies to improve effectiveness and transparency of materials and information flows within the supply chain. This demand has resulted in an entire industry dedicated to the development and design for the RFID chip. Today, the Health Care Industry is pushing the RFID technology to offer solutions to their most urgent issues with the care of patients.