Healthcare on Agenda of RFID Conference

At RFID Europe 2008, Dutch physician Erik Jan van Lieshout presented a paper on the safety of RFID in critical care environments.

RFID technology can be uniquely useful for tracking medical equipment and personnel in a hospital, but it is not without its hazards. The technology’s healthcare applications were among the topics addressed at the RFID Europe 2008 conference, which began today at Churchill College in Cambridge, UK.

At a session titled “RFID in the Critical Care Environment: Is It Safe?,” Erik Jan van Lieshout, critical care physician at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam, struck a cautionary note. When the ministry of health proposed a pilot project using RFID technology at the medical centre, van Lieshout thought it might be a good idea to see what had been published on the safety of RFID in a healthcare environment. Specifically, he wondered if it might not cause electromagnetic interference with critical care equipment. “To our surprise, no literature existed on this topic,” he told attendees. So, he and his group decided to do their own research.

The team tested active and passive RFID systems in proximity to 41 devices, and the results were startling: Of the 34 incidents they catalogued, 22 were deemed hazardous. Once the study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Assocation, a media feeding frenzy ensued. The facts got a little mangled in the process, he added.

Many general media outlets failed to note that the cause of almost all of the incidents was the RFID reader, and not the tag itself, van Lieshout noted. The point, he stressed to conference attendees is to do tests, “because you can’t predict what might happen.” How to move on? he asked rhetorically. “By updating international standards, carefully managing the introduction of new wireless technologies, and conducting on-site tests with critical care equipment.”

A different pilot project involving the use of RFID in a healthcare setting that was presented immediately after van Lieshout’s paper had a brighter outcome. Clinical scientist Jason Britton told attendees about the virtual portable medical device library that RFID technology has enabled at Royal Alexandra Hospital near Glasgow.

Tracking down portable medical devices is often a challenge at his facility, explained Britton. “The typical NHS solution is to set up an equipment library,” he said, but that creates its own set of problems. Besides, his hospital did not have the available space, so they decided to use RFID to create a virtual library. Wireless access points were set up at various locations in the test site within the hospital, and tags were attached to the equipment. No EMI incidents were observed, he noted. The primary reason, he believes, is because the readers were fixed to the ceiling, a fair distance from the portable devices. The pilot programme was completed successfully, and deployment of the RFID-based tracking system is planned throughout the hospital.

RFID Europe 2008 runs through 1 October.

Tags: RFID, Seminars, ]