RFID IN HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

INTRODUCTION

            Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a modern and state of the art technology used in identifying objects. The RFID technology uses electromagnetic fields systematically and carefully attached to a tag. The RFID is typically and commonly used in tracking and identifying products. The RFID has become a growing trend in the health care industry. The application and wide use of the technology has been driven by the prevalent and greater emphasis on patient safety that has never been witnessed before. The problem at the moment in the health care industry is ensuring that every patient has been treated in the best way possible and that patients have value for the services they pay for.

            The problem in the health care industry which can get solved using the application and implementation of the RFID system is tracking medical equipment, patients, and staff. Patients at one of the hospitals in the United Kingdom (UK) were exposed to the human version of mad cow disease. This happened when the health care staff at that hospital used the infected equipment. The human error at the hospital caused the patients to be exposed to the infected equipment. This is a catastrophic situation that the hospital would have avoided by use of RFID to track the equipment.

            Use of suitable protocols and RFID technology would have enabled the hospital to avoid such outbreaks by ensuring that they had properly tracked and classified equipment. This among other benefits of RFID in health care industry would have provided significant benefits thus ensuring patient safety and improve the efficiency of the supply chain. The application of the RFID in the health care industry now improves the safety and operational efficiency since it operates without the need for line-of-sight while providing the users with read and writes capabilities for dynamic tracking of equipment, staff, and patients (Pleshek, 2016). 

OVERVIEW OF RFID

            RFID has become a forward technology not only in the health care industry but also all the industries it has been extensively applied. There is no industry buzz about the role the RFID technology plays than the health care industry. The application and implementation of RFID in the healthcare industry are all about saving lives. It tracks medical equipment thus ensuring they are in stock and that medication is in the right dose. There is no doubt that the application of the RFID in the health care industry is revolutionizing the whole industry (Wu, Ranasinghe, & Sheng, 2011).

Basics of RFID

            RFID is a system used for identification and uses electromagnetic and electronic coupling to uniquely identify objects, people, and animals. The technology has been previously used in other industries such as manufacturing and retail but it has now found its way through to the health care industry for tracking medical equipment. RFID has become an integral part of human life. Its history and origin can be traced back in 1944 during the Second World War. The nations at war were using radar for identification and warning the approaching planes while they were still far away. However, the radar system could not differentiate the enemy planes from the friendly planes.

            The problem of the radar system created the need for a new identification that could differentiate enemy planes from the own and friendly planes. This is how RFID was invented but it has continued to develop since then. A modern RFID system comprises a chip and an antenna. The chip is used for storing and carrying data. Additionally, an RFID system has a computer system specifically used for hosting the data. The RFID tag, also referred to as responder or radio barcode comes in various sizes. However, its size depends on where it is being fixed. A tag can either be passive or active. The two types of tags are differentiated by powering and charging. A passive tag is charged by the condenser thus maintaining an uninterrupted power supply (Bhuptani & Moradpour, 2005).

Advances in RFID

            The current RFID system is cheaper, smaller, and more powerful when they are compared with the RFID system of the yester years. Therefore, they have improved their capability of tracking equipment. Additionally, RFID system is contactless and does not need to be in direct contact with the equipment to functionally operate. The RFID system has also become sensitive and increased in the speed with which it reads and tracking equipment. Therefore, RFID systems have become efficient and effective. At the same time, they can easily traverse through physical barriers. The modern RFID systems apply layered approach in the ways they read and acquire data from items and equipment on which they are embedded. Additionally, they have improved their accuracy by use of redundant readers, detailed auditing of the data, and new ways and methods of reading data from the tags.

BENEFITS AND DISADVANTAGES

Benefits

(i)     Patient safety – Embedding an RFID on the patient’s wrist improves patient’s safety at the point of care.

(ii)   Operating medical equipment and instruments – During operations and surgery procedures instruments and medical equipment can easily get monitored. This ensures that all materials in the procedures are easily accounted for.

(iii) Laboratory, file, and pharmacy labeling – The RFID system prevents misidentification of specimens therefore, reducing costly error. Additionally, it adds accuracy, efficiency, and safety to the prescription processing (Brown, 2011).

(iv) Access control – It streamlines access control using cards. Additionally, it monitors and controls access to restricted areas in medical office.

(v)   Supply chain and logistics – RFID systems ensure traceability of medical supplies, transportation of organ transplant, and medical prescriptions.

Disadvantages

(i)     There is no global standard for the implementation of the RFID system which disrupts the system functionalities.

(ii)   RFID system’s transmission can easily get disrupted when they are used near an electromagnetic spectrum such as Wi-Fi.

(iii) The cost of implementing RFID system has become very high, and many people who would have wanted to implement cannot afford

SECURITY CONCERNS ASSOCIATED WITH RFID SYSTEMS

            Although the implementation of the RFID system in the health care industry has shown to be beneficial, there are security concerns associated with the RFID systems. One problem associated with RFID systems is lack of global standards. This can make the intruders easily reverse engineer the systems thus stealing data and information. Where RFID systems are used for tracking people, it raises concerns because it breaches their privacy. This also leads to security threats because the people are notified of the monitoring. At the moment, cyber criminals have devised methods of cloning and hijacking RFID systems. This security threat lowers the rate at which RFID systems may be implemented in various industries.

            Cyber criminals can easily tamper with data and information in the systems. Therefore, data easily becomes accessible to unintended people. When the data falls into the hands of the wrong people, it poses security threats to the owners of the data. Additionally, cyber criminals can easily intercept RFID system transmission in case there is security lapse. There is no proved way in which RFID tags can be encrypted. Therefore, at the moment there is no way of ensuring maximum security of RFID systems (Phillips, Karygiannis, & Kuhn, 2005).

IMPACT OF IMPLEMENTATION

Deployment Procedures

            The deployment of the RFID system outlines installation and commissioning. Additionally, when deployment the system for equipment tracking, there is need for new procedures on how the system functions. RFID tags should be fixed appropriately on the medical equipment which it will track. Configurations should follow, but if there is a need for middleware, it should be implemented as well. Additionally, the system should be installed and deployed in such a way that it meets the security procedures required.

Training Medical Staff

            It is common that the implementation of the new RFID system be met with resistance. Transitioning from manual tracking of equipment to one reliant on the RFID system will be a daunting task for nurses, physicians, and other staff. However, converting to the RFID system should not be something that will be dreaded by the health care industry staff. There will be a need for proper training of the staff to learn the complications of the RFID system. Training is essential to the implementation process of the RFID system which is a new system. It will help the health care industry avoid setbacks and errors and facilitate smooth transitioning from manual to automatic tracking of equipment (Guerrero, 2013).

Continuous Improvement

            As the RFID system matures, it will not be able to function in the same way and manner it did at the beginning. Once the users and functionalities increase, it will become painfully obvious if the system’s development will not be able to scale. The system should be continuously improved and scaled to avoid sabotaging the good intentions and good efforts of the system. Additionally, the system should be continuously developed thus avoid things taking longer, missing milestones, slipping of quality, and confusion. The person in charge of the RFID system should always identify changing requirements of the system and always that they are worked upon to ensure the system functions as usual.

CONCLUSION

            The health care industry is slowly adopting and implementing the RFID system. However, the usage of the system is expected to rapidly accelerate with dropping of the prices and addressing the security concerns of the RFID system. Additionally, this will make the health care industry gain more confidence with the RFID systems. The strong functionalities of the RFID system are expected to improve the operational efficiency of the health care industry by reducing labor and improving equipment visibility and in the process reduce overall levels of inventory. The health care industry should explore the benefits associated with the implementation of RFID system. However, the industry should first weigh the costs and the benefits before the implementation of the system. Although the implementation of the system is expensive and there is some security concerns associated with the system, the benefits of the RFID system in the health care industry outweigh the costs and security concerns.

REFERENCES

Bhuptani, M., & Moradpour, S. (2005). RFID field guide: deploying radio frequency          identification systems. Prentice Hall PTR.

Brown, C. (2011). Five advantages of RFID in health care.

Guerrero, A. (2013). Five best practices for training staff on using a new EHR.  

 The Profitable Practice:

Phillips, T., Karygiannis, T., & Kuhn, R. (2005). Security standards for the RFID market. IEEE    Security & Privacy, 3(6), 85-89.

Pleshek, J. (2016). RFID: A no-brainer for the health care industry.

Wu, Y., Ranasinghe, D. C., & Sheng, Q. Z. (2011). RFID enabled traceability networks: A           survey. Distributed Parallel Databases, 29 (3), 397-443.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in college research paper services if you need a similar paper you can place your order for best essay services online.