From Health IT World
September 21, 2004

RFIDs Finding a Place in the Operating Room, Supply Chain

Radio frequency identification (RFID), a mobile and wireless technology used to track the location of patients, hospital supplies, and medical equipment in real-time, is getting a lot of attention. Although not widely deployed, RFID appears to be gaining legs in clinical pilot programs.

"Providers are finding that RFID is an effective way to track patients and automate supply chain processes, as well as tag consumables and procured portable equipment that tends to move around," says Capgemini vice president Donald Gravlin. "There is a huge value proposition to actively locating people and items in a hospital environment with RFID."

At the Center for the Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT), an alliance of Harvard teaching physicians and MIT scientists and engineers, RFID technology is playing a large role in its Operating Room of the Future (ORF) initiative.

Launched in 2000, the Cambridge, Mass.-based ORF is a joint collaboration between CIMIT and Massachusetts General Hospital that was created to address the challenges of minimally invasive surgery.

"For the ORF, we have focused on technologies that are conducive to workflow efficiency in order to repair the perioperative process," says Janice Crosby, CIMIT director of business development. RFIDs have two roles, she says.

"We wanted to address the potential of new technologies for tracking people and equipment. Also, we look at how to develop technologies to measure wireless data by using patient tracking [through RFID] to measure and collect information."

RFID technology vendors for the ORF are Radianse and Mobile Aspects. Radianse's RFID platform centers around an indoor positioning system used to locate patients in any area of a hospital. Mobile Aspects zeroes in on surgical environments, where medical equipment, drugs, and supplies need to be accounted for throughout the day.

"RFID increases the success rate of well thought-out healthcare-IT projects," says Mike Dempsey, Radianse chief technology officer. "At Mass General [in the ORF], patients wear tags on their aprons and can be tracked from anywhere in the hospital."

Active technology fills a different need than passive battery-less RFID, which tracks things such as drugs and surgical items at close range.

"One system will not solve everyone's problems. Specific location information for active and passive data needs to be integrated, and hospitals can then make active business decisions based on data provided," Dempsey says. "Getting hospital administrators to understand how different RFID systems work is key."

Streamlining and speeding up workflow is RFID's payoff.

"Most hospitals have increased the number of daily surgeries, which raises the potential for errors and complications," Dempsey says. "MGH has a space shortage and depends on RFID to make patient care safer, improve efficiency, and get patients in and out as quickly as possible. This is done by having an updated status on patient location by tracking RFID tags on a Web-based map grid every 10 seconds so physicians can know where they are and see if a unit is full."

Pricey Tags

Mobile Aspects CEO Suneil Mandava says RFID technology has furthered the ways in which hospitals monitor supply chains. In the ORF, he says, drugs and other items with expiration dates can be tracked and the system can alert the caregiver when an item has expired or needs to be refilled. "This tracking used to be done manually, but now very little human interaction is required," Mandava says. "Improved supply chain tracking enhances the quality of care because no one has to spend time scanning items [with a bar-code reader].

Despite the apparent advantages RFID offers, there are financial considerations before deployment is widespread, according to Capgemini's Gravlin. "Compared to bar coding, RFID is pricey. Until ROI is consistently demonstrated, it may be a while before providers get on board."

CIMIT's Crosby agrees. "There is a need to get the cost of RFID tags down. Most passive tags are 50 cents, and active tags are $15. And when you figure in the number of patients and items that need to be tagged, it adds up." Crosby adds that the average number of RFID tags per application varies, based on the specific needs of a hospital and what it is tracking.

Another RFID concern is privacy. But because patient, medication, and equipment tracking is done numerically, an RFID information leak is less threatening than an unattended computer terminal or a loose piece of paper with sensitive patient data, according to Forrester Research analyst Eric Brown.

"If RFID data is accessed by someone without authorization, there is not much to gain," Brown says. "The only information available is numbers representing patients, drugs, supplies, and equipment. Privacy is not a huge issue because there is not a lot of data being exchanged with RFID tags."

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