Background & Application
The goals of the healthcare industry are to improve people's health, prevent and treat diseases, provide high-quality and effective medical services, meet patients' needs, and improve their quality of life. With the development of science and technology and increasing demand for health, the healthcare industry is also constantly innovating and developing. Without a doubt, healthcare is a topic that everyone cares about, so that the industry attracts a great deal of attention, and the requirements for safety and accuracy are higher. Combined with HIS (Hospital Information System), RFID technology can bring significant progress and development to the healthcare industry. It can accurately record patient treatment progress, medical use, and surgical status, and provide strong support for patient safety and health. Applications such as blood management, medical equipment management, medical waste management, medical-patient information management, and medical supplies management are growing rapidly. It is foreseeable that RFID technology will be used by more hospitals and pharmaceutical companies in the future.
1. Application in Medical and Patient Information Management
During hospitalization, the attending physician often needs to treat many patients at the same time, which leads to some confusion. When a patient has a sudden condition, the best treatment opportunity may be delayed due to the inability to obtain his medical record information in a timely manner. By using portable RFID reader, doctors can quickly read the electronic tags on patients to obtain their detailed information. This helps doctors to formulate more accurate treatment plans. RFID technology can also help real-time monitor patients who require special attention, such as isolated infectious disease patients. Through the RFID system, ensure that these patients are always in control. In addition, medical staff need to conduct regular ward inspections, such as replacing medications and nursing supplies. The application of RFID technology enables these important tasks to be efficiently completed.
2. Applications in Blood Management
In the standard process of blood management, the following key steps are involved:
donor registration, physical examination, blood sample testing, blood collection, blood storage, inventory management (such as component processing), blood distribution, and final blood supply to patients in hospitals or for manufacturing other blood products. This process involves huge data information management, covering blood donor information, blood type, time and location of blood collection, and related personnel information. Due to the highly perishable nature of blood, any unsuitable environmental conditions can damage its quality, which complicates blood management. RFID technology provides an efficient solution for blood management. By attaching a unique RFID label to each bag of blood and entering relevant information, these labels are linked to the HIS database. This means that blood can be monitored by the RFID system throughout the entire process, from collection points to blood banks to usage points in hospitals. Its mobilization information can be tracked in real time.
In the past, blood inventory management was time-consuming and required manual information verification prior to use. With the introduction of RFID technology, data acquisition, transmission, verification, and updates can be achieved in real-time, speeding up blood identification during inventory management, and significantly reducing errors during manual verification. The non-contact identification feature of RFID can also ensure that blood can be identified and tested without being contaminated, this further reduces the risk of blood contamination. Smart RFID labels have good environmental adaptability and can work properly even in the special environment for storing blood. Medical staff can use handheld RFID readers to verify whether the blood bag information matches the relevant blood information on the patient's RFID wristband to ensure that patients receive matched blood. This measure greatly enhances the safety and accuracy of blood transfusion.
3. Application of Medical Equipment Tracking and Positioning
In hospitals, various instruments and equipment are core components of hospital operations. However, with the development of medical facility technology, managing these instruments and equipment has become increasingly difficult. Traditional management methods sometimes cannot meet the demand in ensuring the correct use, movement, and safety of equipment. Among these devices, some need to be regularly moved to meet different medical needs, while others are susceptible to theft due to their high value or specificity. This leads to some devices are unable to be found or even lost at critical moments. This not only affects the continuity of the medical process but also puts financial and operational pressure on hospitals. To solve these problems, electronic tags embedded with RFID chips can be attached on key medical instruments and equipment. Whether they are in storage, in use, or in transit, the current location of the equipment can be accurately obtained through the RFID system. Combined with an alarm system, the system will immediately issue an alarm when the equipment's location is abnormal or unauthorized movements occur, effectively preventing equipment theft. This not only improves the safety of equipment but also greatly reduces operational problems caused by poor management or theft.
Advantages of RFID Technology
1) The entire process from a patient's admission to discharge in a hospital can be accurately tracked and identified, including identity and treatment progress status, which effectively prevents misdiagnosis caused by information deviation and improves the efficiency of medical treatment.
2) Tracking and locating the entire process of drug production to use can eliminate counterfeit and inferior drugs in the market from the source, which is beneficial to the management of drug safety.
3)Faced with a variety of medical equipment, the application of RFID technology can improve the efficiency of medical personnel in the management of medical equipment, devices, and materials. It can grasp the specific usage in real-time and reasonably allocate medical resources.
Analysis of Product Selection
When selecting a RFID label, it needs to consider the dielectric constant of object attached as well as the impedance between the RFID chip and the RFID antenna. The RFID labels required by the general healthcare industry can be very small (ceramic antenna can be 18×18mm) for special applications. In a low temperature environment (storage environment of blood bags) and in the absence of special requirements:
1) Art paper or PET are used as surface material and hot melt glue is usable. Water glue can meet the needs and control the cost.
2) The label size is mainly determined according to the user’s requirement. Generally, the antenna size 42×16mm, 50×30mm, and 70×14mm can meet the needs.
3) The storage space needs to be large. For ordinary applications, it’s enough to choose a chip with an EPC memory between 96bits and 128bits, such as NXP Ucode 8, Ucode 9, Impinj M730, M750, etc. If the information storage demand is large, require the advantages of HF and UHF complementary, dual frequency labels are available.
XGSun Related Products
Advantages of RFID medical tags provided by XGSun: High sensitivity and strong anti-interference ability. They comply with the ISO15693, ISO18000-6C protocols and NFC Forum T5T (Type 5 Tag) technical standards. The advantage of dual-frequency RFID products is that they retain the ability of UHF large-batch and fast inventory, have a long transmission distance, and strong group reading ability. They also retain the ability of HF to interact with mobile phones, greatly expanding the breadth of RFID use. The tag is low-cost and offers high cost performance, fast read and write speed, high data security, large data storage capacity, convenient to read and write, strong environmental adaptability, long service life and wide range of applications. It also supports customization of various styles.
