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At present, HCA, the largest operator of medical institutions in the United States, has used active RFID to monitor mobile properties. The company will further apply this technology to pay close attention to patients.
In the past two years, HCA has conducted active RFID technology tracking property testing in several hospitals. Based on this test, HCA North Florida will expand the application of RFID technology real-time location system (RTLS). The organization consists of 9 hospitals in North Florida and 8 hospitals in South Georgia. Now the organization plans to combine this technology with 2-D bar code technology to track patients. The goal of this plan is to improve patient care, patient safety, hospital operations and work processes.
HCA North Florida is part of the Hospital Corporation of America (HCA). HCA is one of the largest medical service providers in the United States. HCA is located in Nashville and includes 173 regional hospitals and 108 outpatient centers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. Founded in 1968, HCA is one of the earliest hospital companies in the United States. Now the company has 180,000 employees, with a total value of US$25.56 billion in 2006.
The North Florida Department uses 433MHz active RFID tags and readers provided by RTLS provider Agility Healthcare Solutions to track the location of various properties, such as infusion pumps, wheelchairs, hospital beds, and thermometers. In Mun, vice president of research and technology at HCA, said: “We track anything that can be moved.” The RFID hardware uses a proprietary weather interference protocol and is now in use in several hospitals, but Mun declined to disclose the hospital involved in the trial. .
Mun said that due to the application of the RTLS system, HCA North Florida has shortened the time for equipment to be in place and improved the management of lease contracts, equipment maintenance and guarantee agreements. “In a hospital like ours, it takes 30-40% of the time for engineers to check equipment only.” He added that if there is no RFID technology, only bar codes can be used to identify items. This method requires alignment with standard lines. In order to obtain specific information about the property, such as equipment maintenance plan information. “If you, like us, own hundreds of properties, it is impossible to find them all (track their locations).”
The property tracking RTLS system allows Mun and his colleagues to increase their understanding of RFID technology and know what is beneficial to hospital equipment. For example, the branch tested a Wi-Fi-based RFID system and found that the system was not the best choice. Mun said: “The Wi-Fi-based RTLS system can only track a small number of properties at each entry point—maybe only 20 out of 50.” “If you enter the medical area, there will be a hundred or more devices there. , So that area will become a blank gap.”
The Wi-Fi system tested by Mun and colleagues uses an active tag that requires a relatively large battery (about the size of a credit card), making the tag too large to fit on thermometers and small devices. The North Florida Department of HCA also tested passive RFID, but the interpretation of passive RFID is not as reliable as active RFID.
The North Florida Department of HCA is currently implementing a plan to use RTLS to track patients. The plan is to fix a 433MHz tag on the patient’s strap with a 16-digit unique ID number built into the tag. The label can be reused and sterilized before each use. The organization will test patient straps with 2-D barcodes, so each patient is equipped with two straps, one with RFID function and the other with 2-D barcode. 2-D barcode is a checkerboard-style barcode that expresses stored information on a double-layer surface. The barcode can be used to store thousands of data and ASCII characters. It is different from linear barcodes (single-level barcodes), which are It is composed of vertical lines and can only store a small amount of ASCII code characters or data.
To protect the privacy of patients, the RFID watchband only transmits a unique ID number, which is associated with specific patient information in the terminal system. The system provides medical staff with the specific location information of each patient through the hospital computer. HCA will install a fixed interrogator network within the hospital, accept the tag transmission information, and transmit the data to the server. Then the server interprets the transmitted information and determines the location of the tag.
In order to identify patients and obtain their medical records, doctors or nurses use a laptop computer equipped with a 2-D barcode scanner to interpret the barcode strap. The scanner interprets the 2-D barcode in PDF format, and then converts the barcode into human-readable text. The laptop will display the patient’s name, treatment, and other information deemed relevant by the hospital. Mun said: “Traditional straps only contain a single-level barcode and the patient’s name, but dual-level barcodes can store hundreds of characters on the strap. This is no longer a problem.” But 2-D barcodes Cannot provide location information.
Mun said that HAC uses both technologies at the same time because the combination can provide a more comprehensive solution for patient tracking and identification. Not only the privacy of patients is protected (because patient information is not public), but patients can still be identified in the event of a power outage-which is very necessary for hospitals that are vulnerable to hurricanes. If HCA North Florida only relies on active RFID technology to identify and locate patients, it may not be able to identify and track patients in the event of a power outage. In this case, the RTLS network and other computer equipment may be shut down due to a power outage.
Mun said: “Ultimately, we will end the use of two technologies at the same time, because these two technologies do not support each other, and their application fields are not used.” “Using active RFID, we can accurately know the location of the patient. In some cases, this is very important, such as the emergency. 2-D barcode has different advantages. When treating patients, it can easily enable us to obtain the information we need. It is the only way in the case of power outages. The equipment used is battery-powered equipment. The laptop has a back-up power source, so we can still get relevant information.”
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