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Siemens IT Services is cooperating with Isar University Hospital in Munich to use active and passive RFID tags to track instruments used in surgical operations such as cotton balls and swabs, as well as the entire operation.
Isar University Hospital hopes to use experiments to determine whether RFID technology can ensure that cotton balls, swabs and other substances will not be left in patients. According to Siemens, the experiment achieved tracking by manually sewing passive 13.56MHz RFID tags into cotton balls and other materials.
Passive 13.56MHz RFID tag
The concept of using RFID tags to track surgical cotton balls is not the latest. As early as 2004, ClearCount Medical Services in Pittsburgh, USA was developing surgical cotton balls embedded with RFID chips. In November 2006, a distributor in Illinois, the United States, began to sell surgical gauze, towels, cotton balls and other substances that may be left in the patient’s body with a passive 145KHz RFID chip embedded in the medical industry.
The business of Siemens IT Services includes consulting, outsourcing, system integration and other services for companies in various industries. At the same time, as the company’s research and development department, it provides IT services for the company. Siemens is a global supplier of electronics, electrical appliances, and IT products with 475,000 employees and 2006 sales of approximately US$119 billion.
Siemens IT Services Department has also participated in other RFID projects, such as a 12-week test in February to determine whether RFID medical cards can be used to obtain and transmit patient medical information more efficiently. Participants of this test also have emergency medical information. Service providers MedicAlert and the University of California. The RFID interrogator used in the test was provided by Siemens IT. Siemens and Isar University Hospital plan to install fixed RFID readers in operating rooms to scan RFID tags in cotton balls and gauze, so as to ensure that these substances will not be left in patients after surgery.
In addition, it is necessary to track the medical staff during the operation: before the operation, each medical staff wears an active RFID card. When the nurses and doctors enter the operating room, the fixed RFID reader will record the ID number and entry At the time, the medical staff returned the RFID card after the operation and the ID number and time were recorded again by the reader. In this way, the reader can record the start and end time of the mobile phone. During the operation, the reader can also record the location of each employee. Siemens said that they have determined the specific frequency band of the active RFID card.
The tags and readers for this project are all provided by Siemens. At present, Siemens is improving the reading distance of the readers and the medical substances that need to be tracked. The experiment will begin this summer and will continue for three years.
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