What are the benefits of RFID in healthcare?

There are numerous benefits of using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology in the hospital. RFID technology provides an automated and reliable data capture system that helps enable hundreds of healthcare applications. The Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology can enable hospitals with a performance edge by connecting their diverse data into the kind of actionable insights that lead to optimal care. The solutions can help them identify, track, locate and monitor the condition of every patient, staff, and asset in their organization, thereby enabling their healthcare facility with business intelligence that helps deliver better outcomes for their patients and their bottom line.

We spoke to Subramaniam Thiruppathi, Country Lead for India and Sub-Continent, Zebra Technologies Asia Pacific, to understand various benefits of adopting RFID in healthcare. In the case of patients, every step of the patient journey can be captured with RFID patient tracker solutions that help track and monitor the location of your patients, helping caregivers provide optimal care and safety. This helps to:

• Reduce time to treatment: The analysis of treatment and location data to optimize workflows will ensure that patients with critical heart or stroke risks can get treated as quickly as possible.

• Improve patient monitoring: Zebra's solutions can help to track cognitively and physically impaired patients, allowing staff to monitor patient location at all times and prevent falls and injury.

• Secure mother-infant tracking: Patient tracking and infant security systems ensure proper mother-to-infant matching, providing optimal safety and security for the newborn.

In the case of hospital asset tracking, RFID sensors and tags can be placed on critical medical assets and devices like patient blood bags, IV pumps, heart monitors, beds, wheelchairs, and anything that influences patient outcomes or has high monetary value. RFID readers will then automatically note the location of the asset or device as it moves, thereby providing real-time visibility into every item. This helps to:

• Improve inventory management: This ensures that the healthcare front-line workers have ready access to all the critical supplies and assets they need when they need them.

• Lower operational costs: Through RFID technology, hospitals will be able to better understand which medical equipment are under-utilized. This helps to improve utilization rates of existing equipment, reducing the unnecessary purchase of extra inventory.

• Automate clinic inventory: RFID technology helps to achieve automated inventory management that allows healthcare front-line workers to enjoy real-time inventory data, monitor trends and order before supplies are below critical levels. Through this, it frees up their time to focus on patient care, which enhances the patient experience.

Lastly, RFID technology can help with the tracking of hospital staff. Through the capturing of this data, hospitals will be able to optimize their clinical workflows and avoid bottlenecks. This translates to the ability to make informed decisions, better streamlining of workflows and improved patient care as a result.

Further, when the hospital’s clinical communication is integrated with staff locating systems, alarms can be set up to shut off immediately when a nurse enters the patient room, thereby reducing alarm fatigue. The equipping of the staff with sensor technologies can also help to quickly identify and assign the right staff during an emergency.