RFID Applications in Healthcare

Radio frequency and identification technology (RFID) is garnering a huge market attention among various technology companies. It would not be wrong to say that RFID is proving to be a better alternative than barcodes when it comes to providing security to a product.

RFID Technology
Healthcare is a field where small mistakes can cost huge financial and personal losses. Improving operational efficiency is the prime target for hospitals. Maintaining effectiveness and keeping a check on every patient, is a tough task. No doubt, doctors and nurses work day and night for the betterment of the patient, but what if human effort is complemented with an excellent technology?

Applications of RFID
There are various applications of RFID in the healthcare. Though initially, RFID found a negative response in this sector initially, with changing trends, RFID technology is becoming its important part.

• Drug Faking: Every year, the World Health Organization reports indicate an increase in the illicit trade of medicines. Pharmaceutical companies lose billions of dollars every year due to illicit trade and many people lose their lives on account of wrong medication. All these threats can be averted by using RFID technology. RFID tags are put on medicines, which gives them a unique code and identity. In case of illegal distribution, the fake medicines can be easily distinguished. Expired medicines can also be kept under check by using RFID tags.
• Inventorying and Stocktaking: Supply chain management of the medicines and drugs is essential in delivering orders and maintaining an extra stock of medicines. RFID tags can help distributors keep an eye on the availability of medicines, so that they have stocks piled up for emergency requirements. This will also save time and improve the efficiency of the suppliers and distributors.
• Instrument Safety: It is mandatory to sterilize medical equipment before reusing them. Infections and contagious diseases spread due to unclean instruments. How can RFID tags prove to be useful here? Medical devices can be provided with RFID tags and RFID readers can be set up at the entrance of storing chambers so that they give information about the status (cleaned/sterilized/unsterilized) of such devices. This helps eliminate disastrous errors that may occur on using unclean instruments. The RFID tags can also give the exact location of the medical devices inside the rooms/chambers that helps to save time.
• Packaging Problems: Often the seal and packaging of medicines may be doubtful. Read/write RFID tags can be very useful in solving these problems. Information regarding the seal time, packaging date etc. can be put on the RFID read/write tags, that can be checked whenever necessary. Even when the medicines are exported to different countries, the exporters can keep an eye on their materials. This is of great help to pharmaceutical companies.
• Accountability and Product Safety: An important part in the process of drug approval by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the clinical testing and authentication of medicines. Using RFID technology, the authorities can make the product more reliable and moreover, the companies will also be accountable to government rules and regulations.
• Patient Tracking and Information: Data management about the patient's health (report tests, medicines etc.) can be maintained on a database and that too, automated directly by the RFID tags. RFID tags can also convey information about the health status of the patients by monitoring and recording blood pressures and heartbeat rates. This can facilitate faster recovery of the patient and also help the nurses/caretakers to have a better check on the patient's health.

RFID technology can be made an integral part of healthcare. It reduces risk factors of human error in the industry. As RFID technology gets less expensive, it will surely be employed in many more hospitals.