Get well soon, safely

On the one side, – increasing patient numbers; on the other, – tighter budgets. The personnel at many clinics and medical practices work under great pressure. The risk of making a mistake increases under such working conditions. More and more institutions are employing RFID to increase safety for individual patients. The technology is primarily used for documentation purposes.

In order to reduce patient waiting times, the University Hospital in Nice employs RFID. New patients receive an armband with integrated RFID transponder on arrival. The number stored on the transponder is linked to the patient’s electronic files in a database. The doctor responsible can read the number using a small portable computer and then view and update the database information. The advantage: examination results and other important information is always available and up-to-date. Searching for the right documents is made a thing of the past.

The University Hospital in Jena uses RFID to make sure that every patient gets the right medication. In the wards, the doctors enter orders directly into the patients’ electronic file. The system then sends the order to the appropriate chemists where the product is made available and tagged with a transponder. Patients wear an RFID armband with a code. Before the patient is given the medicine, the code is compared to the electronic file. This virtually rules out patients being given the wrong medication.