RFID-based Information System for Patients and Medical Staff Identification and Tracking

Abstract

RFID applications can provide significant benefits to the healthcare industry to ensure patient safety and also to improve supply chain efficiency. In fact, healthcare is predicted to be one of the major growth areas for RFID. An analysis (Frost Sullivan, 2005) estimates that the RFID in healthcare and pharmaceutical applications markets will reach $2318.7 million in 2011. This chapter presents some applications that integrate RFID technology in healthcare domain. It also presents an RFID-based integrated system for patients and medical staff identification and tracking, called RFIDHospitalTracker. Our RFID-based system could be used in hospitals with large patients flow, allowing hospital staff to read patients' identification tags (RFID cards), which can help avoid some medical errors, like giving patients improper prescriptions or someone else's treatment.