RFID Applications in
Hospital Equipment Tracking

Prepared by Supply Insight Inc.

Document Revision: 1.0
Release Date: April 20, 2006
Written by: Supply Insight Inc.

Overview

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a system that transmits the identity of any object or person (in the form of a unique serial number) wirelessly using radio waves. It is recognized under a category of automated identification technologies that includes bar coding and intelligent sensors that can be used for different applications. Bar codes, optical character readers, and biometric technologies like retinal scans are some of the automated identification technologies that reduce the time and labor needed to input and manage data manually, thereby improving operations and data accuracy. The basic components of RFID technology are the tags and readers that collect, integrate, store, and report the information collected.

Healthcare organizations are considering RFID for its potential to improve patient safety and business processes. RFID applications in the healthcare industry are focused on patient safety (identification and medication administration), business flow management, and asset/equipment management. The healthcare industry is realizing that patient safety and medication is the most important business benefit of RFID. There have already been organizations that have started pilot RFID applications for patient and worker identification, access control and security, and hospital equipment tracking.

Hospital Equipment Tracking Applications

Even before the recent RFID mandates were introduced, the problems of managing and tracking equipment and assets have plagued hospitals and healthcare facilities worldwide. Ranging from bed facilities, IV pumps, surgical equipment, to wheel chairs, there are assets and equipment that create challenges for the healthcare facility.

Analyzing the operational and economic challenges, these problems are:

• Labor costs associated with individuals to search for the equipment when needed
  
• Time lost because of the equipment not being available as needed
  
• Increased inventory costs to purchase or rent the equipment due to lack of availability
  
• Staff frustration with operational inefficiencies
  

Even with well defined material processes, emergencies and unexpected events cause equipment to be misplaced, which leads to time-intensive searches, device hoarding, high replacement costs, and many undefined problems. The table below summarizes the various RFID applications that can provide benefits in equipment tracking for the healthcare industry:

RFID technology offers a remedy to these problems through active RFID tags that can be placed on the equipment or the asset. The types of RFID technologies are: Passive and Active - Real time Location Services (RTLS) or Hybrid Technologies (sensors and integrated solutions).

Passive RFID tags such as bar code systems often require a person to manually scan a tag or a label to capture the data. But the active RFID tags automatically transmit data or location information. The active RFID tags can detect any movement, tampering, or environmental conditions through the use of sensors incorporated in the tags. Active RFID tags are available in a variety of shapes and forms for different types of assets or equipment. Depending on the characteristics of the facility, requirements of the facility or organization, and the importance of the equipment or the asset, an RFID tag placed in a specific area or range of the facility can read the signal to manage or track the asset.

The simple concept is to place a transponder (a microchip with an antenna) on an item and then use a reader (a device with one or more antennas) to read data off the microchip using radio waves. The reader then passes the captured information to a computer so that the information can be used to create business value.

For example, the wheelchairs, beds or IV pumps may be within a building on some floor, but to be located when in need can be a concern. The Overlake Hospital Medical Center is already set to begin an active RFID pilot program for equipment management, wheelchairs and smart pumps in particular. St. Vincent’s is also trying to implement RFID tracking for patients and medical equipment.

Highlighting the financial savings from RFID technology into equipment tracking in healthcare industry:

• Not being able to locate the equipment, hospitals buy extra or replacement devices for availability, which causes high annual spending and many devices are left unutilized or under utilized. Using RFID to manage these devices increases the utilization rate, cuts annual spending, allows divestment of under-utilized assets, and improves confidence that equipment is always be available when needed.
  
• With RFID equipment tracking in place, expensive medical devices can be quickly brought into control by alerts based on location and notification when a device leaves a predefined area.
  
• Equipment management with RFID can eliminate inefficient, long manual searches for assets that need maintenance or need to be returned to central processing units, and can maintain up-to date equipment status.
  
• With a decrease in patient wait time, there is improved patient care, more employee satisfaction for nurses, technicians, doctors, etc., lower per-patient cost of service delivery, effective work flow, and operational efficiency with support staff always at hand.
  
• Most importantly, the risk of JCAHO liability is reduced with better control of equipment usage.
  

Any application that has the basic functionality and can be tailored to an organization’s needs is always preferred over complete custom applications that are time consuming, costly to develop, and complicate the return on investment. Many of the organizations prefer web based applications based on industry standards that have the flexibility to operate on different platforms and can easily interface to other host systems.

RFID is a solution that enables a nurse, a technician, or an authorized employee to easily determine the location of equipment, run queries or reports to provide inventory information, parametric searches, graphical representation to identify the location of the equipment or the asset, and also manage the service and maintenance of the equipment using any computer tied into the network. The results of these applications are beginning to provide proof that using RFID technology in the healthcare industry provides significant labor savings, improved efficiency, and a good return on investment.

Source: barcode book equipment tracking system

According to the Gartner Report on Worldwide RFID Adoption 2005, RFID is not to be considered a replacement for bar codes, but that the two technologies will coexist with users applying the right data collection technology for the right process situation. If bar codes are for highly structured and engineering processes such as warehouses, RFID is for mobile assets in largely chaotic unstructured business processes such as hospitals and retail.

The response to adoption of RFID technology in the healthcare industry is as any other new technology in the beginning. It will take time to overcome the barriers, security and privacy issues but the real value of RFID will be known in the process. Get involved with RFID beginning with pilots to have some insight into the business benefits and how to develop the approach and solutions to overcome the barriers or any confusion. Monitoring the developing RFID standards will help incorporate them into the technological approaches and most efficient business dynamics of how data is exchanged and used in healthcare applications.

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