Rfid in health care

RFID IN HEALTH CAREHEMAPRIYADHARSHINI SAMPATH KUAMR

INTRODUCTION

• Healthcare is considered one of the fastest growing business

and largest service industries in the world.

• To cope with this expansion, the healthcare industry must

change its traditional operations and deploy a new information

system to manage unpredictable processes and supply accurate

responses in time.

ISSUES IN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

According to Larson (2013), the major issues in healthcare industry are

• Balancing care, quality and efficiency

• Improving access to patient care

• Inventory management

• Drug administration

• Medical errors

• Lack of efficient business process management (Ma, 2012)

• Lack of visibility in real-time location (Ma, 2012)

HOW RFID WORKS

RFID BENEFITS IN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

• Inventory control

• Equipment tracking

• Out-of-bed detection

• Ensuring that patients receive the correct medications and medical devices

• Preventing the distribution of counterfeit drugs and medical devices

• Monitoring patients

• Providing data for electronic medical records systems and

• Reducing medical errors

RFID CONSTRAINTS IN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

• High implementation cost – ROI is high

• Electro Magnetic Interference with medical devices such as pace

maker – RFID standards available

• Difficulty in reading tags amidst of liquids and metals

• RFID reader will read all tags within the range

• Lack of organization support

RFID HEALTHCARE SOLUTION PROVIDERS

RFID Solution Provider Key Capability Offerings

Alvin RFID and Wireless Software Platform for Healthcare

New generation patient / object / asset identification and tracking solution

Cisco Location-Aware Healthcare Solution

Ekahau WiFi, uses asset and personnel tags, open API to connect toexisting infrastructure, statistical signal strength monitoring

GE Healthcare WiFi/UWB/infrared hybrid RFID system

NEED FOR RFID STANDARDS

• To ensure RFID interoperability, regardless of vendor or user

(Impinj, n.d)

• To solve the trade-off between location privacy and scalability

in healthcare environments (Picazo-Sanchez, P., Bagheri, N., &

Peris-Lopez, P., 2013)

• To improve patient safety and data privacy (EPCglobal, 2005)

RFID STANDARDS IN HEALTHCARE

• ISO/IEC 18000 standards - automatic identification and item management (Violino, 2005, p. 2)

• 18000–1: Generic parameters for air interfaces for globally accepted frequencies

• 18000–2: Air interface for 130 KHz

• 18000–3: Air interface for 13.56 MHz

• 18000–4: Air interface for 2.45 GHz

• 18000–5: Air interface for 5.8 GHz

• 18000–6: Air interface for 860 MHz to 930 MHz

RFID STANDARDS IN HEALTHCARE

• Electronic Product Code standards (EPC) - in tracking and locating

healthcare products (Turner, 2003; Violino, 2005). Ex: mass serialization,

medication scheduling, and enhanced inventory management

• EPCglobal has developed Auto-ID center that creates its own ultra-high

frequency (UHF) air interface protocol for tracking merchandises through

global supply chain (Turner, 2003; Violino, 2005).

• Since it created Chaos in RFID industry, it developed second-generation

protocol (Gen 2) to create a single, global standard that resembles ISO

standards (Roberti, 2004).

• This enabled RFID vendors to work on both ISO UHF and Gen 2 protocols

(Violino, 2005)

RFID STANDARDS IN HEALTHCARE

• The HIBC is an alphanumeric identification system specifies details

such as item identification, patient information and medical device

information (Connor, 2009; Health Industry Business

Communications Council, 2007).

• ANSI/HIBC 4.0 - guidelines for deploying RFID passive tags in

hospitals (Connor, 2009)

• ANSI/HIBC 4.0 recommends that 13.56 MHz high frequency (HF) RFID

tags can be implemented in hospitals for product level tagging in

order to reduce significant intrusions with medical equipment’s (RFID

update, 2009).

SECURITY CONCERNS

• No authentication - No friend/foe distinction

• No encryption - Eavesdropping possible

• Illicit usage - Risk to patient location privacy and hospital security

• RFID Skimming - digital theft, read and duplicate data from RFID based smart cards

Solution: HIPPA is an act that establishes the privacy, security and electronic transaction

standards with regard to patient health information for all covered entities (HIPAA,

1996; Volonino & Robinson, 2003).

BEST PRACTICES - PLANNING

• Plan RFID solutions based on hospital requirements

• Be sure on what data needs to be stored. Ex: Patient record,

drug information

• Make sure data interpretation and analytics provide information

people can act on

• Consider how the change will be affected by physical elements

• Always be inquisitive about 5Ws – Who, What, When, Where,

Why

BEST PRACTICES - PURCHASING

• Do you need non-line-of-site reading?

• What are the required read ranges?

• Do you need serialization for each item?

• Will the item be traveling or fixed when read? How fast will it be

moving?

• Does the item contain metal in its construction?

• Will your application use fixed or mobile readers?

BEST PRACTICES - INSTALLING

• Solid base to avoid accidental bumping

• Antenna placement and positioning ability

• Fabrication & Manufacturing – professional grade

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUH3_gLMV1M

BEST PRACTICE - SYSTEM MAINTENANCE

• Replace active RFID tags – every 2-3 years

• Backup patient data

• Keep track of equipment repair or service

• Employ RFID based maintenance management system

HUMAN AND PROCESS CHANGES

• Operational – Reduces patient wait and staff overload

• Clinical – Improves patients clinical and nursing quality of

care

• Economical – Total hospital profit, ROI

CHANGES IN ORGANIZATIONAL POLICIES

• Mandatory wear of RFID ID’s

• Mandatory drug administration policies

• Authorized and un-authorized users of RFID technology

• Track location limitations

TRAINING REQUIREMENTS

Different levels of training of hospital personnel will be required based

on the degree of interaction with the RFID system

• Staff – ID card

• Nurses – How to handle RFID readers

• Radiology – RFID & EMI exposure level

• Doctors – Infection control

• Hospital – Track patient flow, doctors, nurses efficiency

IMPLEMENTATION IMPACT

Case studies:

• Improved injection safety - Using a handheld reader with RFID tags in patient wristbands, drugs are matched with prescription information in electronic medical records in Sanraku Hospital, Tokyo

• Infection control - RFID tags deployed to patients and staff is to trace people who come into contact with patients with a contagious potentially dangerous infection such as TB using RFID scanners - Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital, US

Overall,

• Improved patient care

• Improved patient safety and security

• Improved organizational performance

SUMMARY

• RFID in healthcare

• Advantages & Disadvantages

• RFID healthcare solution providers

• RFID standards

• Security concerns

• Best practices – Planning, purchasing, installing, system maintenance

• Human & process changes

• Changes in organizational policies

• Training requirements

• Implementation impact

REFERENCES

http://www.amnhealthcare.com/latest-healthcare-news/five-top-ethical-issues-healthcare/http://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/551https://www.rfidjournal.com/whitepapers/download?159http://www.cisco.com/web/strategy/docs/healthcare/CLA_HealthcareSolution.pdfhttp://dr-health-informatics.weebly.com/advantages-and-disadvantages.htmlhttp://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?1004http://www.barcodesinc.com/info/buying-guides/rfid.htmhttp://ie.technion.ac.il/labs/serveng/files/BPM09_based_business_process_transformation.pdfhttp://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?12428/2