Aside from the many commercial and industrial uses of RFID, one of the most important breakthroughs in technology is RFID patient tracking. This is one health innovation where patients and doctors both benefit from. Doctors need to find where their patients are and patients need to be found.
Patient tracking with the use of RFID is mostly used on patients who are undergoing medical care but are not in their designated locations. These devices are also used on newborn babies in hospitals. The main purpose is correct identification on babies wearing unique RFID wristbands.
Identity wristbands
This particular hospital RFID wristband can be had in three different kinds of frequencies which include 125 KHz, 13.56 MHz and the UHF frequency. These are compatible with several ISO standards and are harmless to the patient’s health.
Besides, this identity wristband is used only once and its size is adjustable to accommodate wrists as small as those of newborns and as large as those in adults. The soft material of the band is suitable for newly born babies.
Advantages
The RFID hospital tags are used to preclude the hundreds of patients receiving wrong medical care on the simple fact that these patients are wrongly identified. Aside from this risk, there is an additional cost of wasted products (medicine) and raised insurance premiums.
Hospital ID wristbands have their own individual ID for tracking patients. With the wristbands in place, there is a great reduction of identification errors on patients.
Other uses
There are other uses for these tracking devices and also on other patients. The RFID on patients has their current information status stored. These would include whether they are ready to be seen by a doctor, or needed an X-ray or is scheduled for other medical procedures.
The stored information would include the patient’s condition and the length of their waiting time. Other information might include their room status (availability, assignment, needs cleaning, etc.) and where patients (and doctors or caregivers) should go next.
Benefits
Some systems have integrated several important data into the tracking device (EMR, schedules, lab tests, etc.) for easy reference. The information is relayed to the relevant medical personnel automatically and speedily.
The process actually reduces the time spent on searching for people and other necessary things with the use of RFID patient tracking. The data entries are all done automatically through healthcare systems integration.
The supplied information gives historical analytics for follow-through process improvement. The automation gives the correct timing for medical authorities to make real-time workflow and adjustments for the staff.
Some details
Real-time location systems (RTLS) for healthcare environments are now integrating their technology with enterprise health record (HER) of hospitals to improve the safety of patients, especially in emergency departments.
When a patient is presented in the emergency department (ED), he/she is registered and is given an RFID. The RTLS also records the patient’s interaction with doctors and staff who wear their own ID tags. As the patient moves through the ED, the RFID patient tracking sends out real-time updates to the system.
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