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In the industry chain of the Internet of Things, item identification technology represented by RFID is one of the core technologies. The earliest application of RFID was in the field of supply chain management, but now, its application is gradually expanding, and the medical industry is beginning to benefit from it. Dr. David L. Brock of the Automatic Identification Technology Center of MIT University in the United States believes that automatic identification technology represented by RFID can bring many benefits to the medical industry. It can help hospitals achieve uninterrupted monitoring of patients and securely share medical records. And tracking of medical devices, etc.
Virtua Health, a New Jersey medical company in the United States, has installed RFID systems in four of its hospitals to track thousands of patients and staff, as well as up to 10,000 assets. The system consists of active 433MHz RFID tags, readers, infrared transmitters, and software for managing tag data. It can be used to track equipment, patients and employees, and manage assets, wards, and emergency rooms.
Also in New Jersey, USA, as early as 2006, the implantable RFID micro-tag (chip) VeriChip started clinical trials at Hackensack Medical Center. VeriChip is generally used for medical purposes. The hospital implants the VeriChip into the upper arm of the patient’s arm to access information about the patient’s condition with chronic diseases. Patients with chronic diseases participating in this trial will enter the emergency room of Hackensack Medical Center in New Jersey. The emergency room medical staff will use a handheld terminal with a built-in RFID reader to scan the patient’s VeriChip location, the 16-digit ID information and database on the VeriChip The patient’s treatment records stored in, will be displayed on the handheld terminal immediately.
In foreign countries, there are various applications of RFID in medical treatment. In China, Beijing Ditan Hospital has also started its application of RFID. This is the first hospital in China to apply related technologies. “Our RFID project this time is also used as a test field.” said Lu Yingwei, director of the Beijing Ditan Hospital Information Center.
RFID covers two major businesses
In October 2008, Beijing Ditan Hospital started its RFID application-Beijing Ditan Hospital Tracking Management System, and the project was completed in March 2009. “At present, our RFID is mainly used in two businesses.” Lu Yingwei said, “One is for the full tracking management of medical equipment packages in the supply room, and the second is for personnel, important medical equipment and medical garbage trucks. Real-time tracking and management of this kind of object.”
“In the management of the equipment bag, we have adopted a button-type high-frequency and high-pressure-resistant high-frequency passive tag.” Lu Yingwei introduced. Because this kind of label is suitable for putting in the equipment bag, and performing high-temperature and high-pressure sterilization together with the equipment bag, and through the system, the packaging and production process, disinfection process, storage process, issuance process, use process and recycling process of the equipment package can be tracked and managed. In such a whole process, a label is used for unique identification and tracking management. The recovered high-frequency tags can still be used in the tracking management of the next equipment package cycle through system designation.
At present, in Beijing Ditan Hospital, the management of equipment kits has gone from no information system management at all to the use of software and RFID applications, and it also combines the mobile operation function of wireless PDA. Each department can use the PDA with RFID scanning head to scan, receive the equipment package out of the library, and be able to scan and view the variety and quantity of the equipment in each equipment package. “Therefore, from the business operation, the equipment package Management has changed from manual management to systematic and automated management”.
Using this management method, you can promptly remind you whether there is an overdue disinfection problem in storage, whether there is an error in the distribution and use process, and you can count the number of various instruments in the package one by one after recycling, which increases the monitoring and control of the entire process. Management can also reduce the possibility of medical accidents.
There has been an accident in the United Kingdom where a patient was infected with mad cow disease due to a device infection. Some researchers believe that if there were RFID applications at that time, a similar situation could be greatly avoided.
“In the real-time tracking and management of personnel, important medical equipment and medical garbage trucks, we have used Ekahau’s positioning engine, which has been successfully applied in many foreign countries, to track and manage through customized research and development.” Lu Yingwei said.
For patients, the doctor can see the current location of some important patients in real time through the system, and if the patient has any problems, he can call for help on the label. After the monitoring personnel see the call for help, they can quickly find a doctor or nurse nearby and notify them for treatment.
Since Ditan Hospital is an infectious disease hospital, the management and control of medical waste is very important. Therefore, “We have installed a location tag on the garbage truck, which can be located in real time, and the operating area has been set in a special area in the system.” In this way, when the garbage truck is pushed out of the area in violation of the regulations, the location system will alarm in real time, and Record the historical trajectory of its illegal operation, and at the same time, you can find the personnel who contacted the garbage truck in the process.
In this way, when the garbage truck crosses the boundary, the system can promptly remind (such as tag buzzing, system pop-up prompt or SMS prompt, etc.). In addition, after the event, you can easily view the historical trajectory to quickly confirm the scope of possible cross-infection.
Integrate with HIS system soon
During the construction of the RFID application project in Beijing Ditan Hospital, its HIS system (Hospital Information System) has not yet been officially launched, so it has not yet implemented an interface with the RFID application system. “However, the interface with the HIS system is currently under project planning and will be improved in the future.” Lu Yingwei said. At that time, the basic patient information can be synchronized and obtained in the HIS system; when the equipment package is in use, which patient is used for, it can also be fed back to the HIS system.
At present, the manufacturing, disinfection, storage, distribution, use, and recycling of equipment kits are involved in tracking management, and historical records must be kept for each business process. The real-time positioning system will also record the positioning information of various tracked objects (people, equipment, garbage trucks) every 5 seconds. In these processes, a large amount of process data and result data must be generated. “After a period of accumulation, these data can be used as one of the data sources for hospitals to build BI (Business Intelligence System) in more ways.”
For example, in the future, based on the tracking and positioning information of garbage trucks and the tracking and positioning information of personnel, similar personnel contact analysis can be performed. On the one hand, area analysis can be performed, that is, for a specified area, such as a certain room, a specified period of time, statistics of who have entered and exited, and can calculate their stay time, etc. In addition, personnel analysis can be carried out. For a specified patient who has cross-infection, the information recorded by the system can be used to query that the contact distance with the patient is shorter than a specified distance (such as 1 meter, 2 meters) within the specified time range. ) To effectively monitor the contact management of patients. Including the management of various types of contact between patients, between patients and medical staff, between personnel and infectious materials, timely alarming and information tracing, monitoring and warning of various contact infections or cross-infections that occur, and providing historical information for analysis , Improve the time for defining the scope of infection, and reduce the undesirable effect of quarantine on too many people.
Currently, the RFID application of Beijing Ditan Hospital is still being piloted in the Department of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine on the 4th floor of the inpatient building. In the future, when the application in the pilot area is mature, the whole hospital will be covered and promoted, and various infectious disease areas will be monitored and controlled in order to avoid medical accidents such as cross-infection. In addition, it is also possible to automatically collect patient vital signs through the application of location tags with temperature or other sensors, thereby reducing the frequency of contact between medical staff and patients and improving the efficiency of data collection.
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