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JHOM
25,5 Radio frequency identification:
the big role player in health care
management
490
Yahia Zare Mehrjerdi
Department of Industrial Engineering, Yazd University, Yazd, Iran

Abstract
Purpose – This paper seeks to review the fundamental concepts of radio frequency identification
(RFID) and to discuss the fact that the road to success for healthcare systems is the thorough
management of patients, employees, equipment, medications, and records throughout the industry.
Thereafter, it aims to prepare a deep review of the technology, study seven new cases on the topic of
healthcare management and deliver a broad applications area thereof.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper identifies key elements of RFID through the review of
healthcare management literature and case studies. For this purpose, seven cases from the healthcare
industry are reviewed to demonstrate the extent of the applications of RFID in this area.
Findings – To make healthcare management systems functional and successfully operational, RFID
solutions can be used to reduce operating costs through management of patients, employees,
equipment, medications, and records to improve tracking and tracing, and preventing the lost of
resources under any circumstances.
Originality/value – This paper delivers a review of RFID on the healthcare industry. For this
reason, the basic and key point on RFID technology is discussed and seven cases from the literature
are reviewed.
Keywords Radio frequency identification, Business values, Health care, Case studies
Paper type Research paper

Journal of Health Organization and
Management
Vol. 25 No. 5, 2011
pp. 490-505
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1477-7266
DOI 10.1108/14777261111161851
1. Introduction
Food and drug industries have enormous potential for utilizing radio frequency
identification (RFID) technology. This is largely because each chip is unique to the
specific box of medication or food it is attached to. Therefore, tracking where each
product is located becomes relatively simple. When a chip is attached to a box and
manufacturer recalls a batch of products, then the RFID tags for the containers affected
can be flagged electronically. Eventually, food and/or drug retailers will not be able to
sell recalled products because cash register and store’s computer system will not allow
it. Once this technology is coupled with the power of the internet and there is a
real-time product recalls, where retailers’ own inventory control systems, tied into
RFID databases, alert the store manager to pull specific type of drug off the shelves
while leaving the rest (Kumar and Budin, 2006).
Many business enterprises and the health industry are applying the advantages of
RFID to experimental projects to improve operational efficiency and to gain a
competitive advantage (Bilge and Ozkarahan, 2004). The advantage of RFID tags is
that they use a memory storage device to store a certain amount of data such as the
product identification number, price, cost, manufacture date, location, and inventory on
hand. Due to this fact that this information can quickly be read by a wireless scanner,
so RFID can process large volumes of multiple data sets at the same time and improve Radio frequency
the efficiency of operations by using identification tags (Chao et al., 2007). identification
A critical tool for fighting with drug counterfeiting and making any improvement
for the public, in general, can be achieved today through the RFID technology. The
question that this industry is facing with is where they should start and how they
should employ RFID technology for complex supply chains. It is estimated that
between 5-8 percent of the trade in drug industry is counterfeit. Given that the 491
pharmaceutical market is over $500 billion across the world, counterfeiting becomes a
very large amount and hence a huge problem. In February 2004 report, the US Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) stated that RFID represents one of the most important
tools to help improve the safety of the drug supply chain. Then, FDA has asked the
industry players to pilot the track-and-trace solutions based on the RFID and related
technologies by the end of 2007. Key industry players are already invested
considerable amount of money on the related technologies. In fact, because many of
large pharmaceuticals are working on multiple RFID projects, Sun Microsystems is
helping them in developing a global RFID approach and architecture instead of
implementing separate solutions for each RFID project (RFID, 2005): “FDA estimates
that counterfeit and substandard product represents $32 billion of the global
pharmaceutical business”, says Kara Romanow, research director at AMR Research,
Boston. So, RFID for Pharmacy represents a unique opportunity to address the
counterfeit problem. Drug makers Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have announced that
they also are preparing to launch RFID pilots (O’Connor, 2007).
Today, the safety of working locations, products, transportations and customers are
the main things to managers. In Pharmaceutical industry that is even more important.
This is because the safety of the people and nations also must be taken into
consideration. Refreshable goods often require strict control of storage/transportation
environments such as high and low temperature. The expiration date must be taken
into consideration as well. Tracking and tracing processes offer the documentation
needed to ensure these safety requirements. Tracking and tracing are ineffective most
often. This is because they are reactive instead of proactive. If we use EPC technology,
products can be tracked and traced very easily. Any person who has access to
information along the supply chain can find out the historical background on a
particular drug, as well as its current location. EPC technology verifies information at
every point along the supply chain helping to ensure product integrity (RFID, 2005).
This research analyzes the coupling of RFID with the health care management
concepts to enhance the productivity of the system under study. Such a research is
needed to determine the RFID value as far as its business value generation capability is
questionable. Research is conducted using a descriptive type information gathering
procedure and situation analysis having selected seven cases from the literature of
RFID and health care management.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: section 2 describes RFID and its
components as such as tags, costs and its frequencies. Section 3 is about RFID
applications in healthcare systems. Section 4 reviews the RFID-based healthcare
systems. In section 4, seven cases on healthcare topics are reviewed. Managerial
implementation is given in section 5. The conclusion is given in section 6.
JHOM 2. What is RFID?
25,5 RFID is a well-known identification technology helping to automate and computerize
data capturing. It was developed in 1970s and is capable of using radio waves to
automatically identify people or objects. It had not been a popular technology until
recent years because it had been too expensive and too limited to use in commercial
applications. An RFID system uses distinct components to capture object information.
492 This technology has a scanning antenna that scans for radio waves. There is a
transceiver to interpret data, a reader to transmit and receive radio frequencies, and a
transponder (RFID tag) that is attached to the object that is being identified. RFID is a
term used for technologies utilizing radio waves for identifying individual items
automatically. The most common way is storing a serial number identifying a product
and related information on a microchip attached to an antenna. RFID is used very
similar to bar codes. It is designed to track items in the supply chain without requiring
a line of sight. To read a bar code its lines had to stay in sight of the scanner to identify
product correctly. RFID tags store up to two kilobytes of data (depending on the
vendor), whereas bar code labels can only store limited information about an object.
RFID tags are also more durable than bar coding tags. RFID tags can endure x-rays
and heated sterilization of medical items. Unlike bar code labels, RFID tags do not
damage easily and are not affected when dirt covers that. RFID tags are read at a
100-1,000 tags per second rate, which is extremely faster than manual scanning of bar
codes.
RFID has been identified as one of the ten greatest contributory technologies of the
twenty-first century. This technology has found a rapidly growing market, with global
sales expected to top $7 billion by year 2008 (Chao et al., 2007). Companies lined up to
use RFID and employing experts to improve the efficiency of their operations in order
to gain competitive advantages over time. Ford uses RFID tags at several of its
facilities to track work-in-process and improve production control. For example, at its
Essex engine plant in Windsor, Ontario, tags carry all the instructions needed to
assemble an engine and collect all the test data accumulated during manufacturing to
be used in product tracking and quality control.
The cost of RFID tags has come down by about 40 percent per year and this trend is
expected to continue for the next few years. Also, they indicated that the ubiquitous
item-level RFID tagging will perhaps arrive towards the end of the decade if the
technology road map to the “one-cent RFID tag” is traversed successfully.

3. RFID applications in health care

In May 2002 Massachusetts General Hospital installed its first trial of the iRIS RFID
system, which was developed by Mobile Aspects. The purpose of iRIS was to manage
inventory and access to medical supplies and surgical parts throughout the hospital.
By the end of 2002, Massachusetts General Hospital had installed six iRIS units in its
operating rooms. According to the RFID Journal, with the assistance of iRIS over
$500,000 worth of equipment and supplies were tracked. Additionally, iRIS has been
integrated into the hospital’s scheduling and billing system. As a result of the success
of iRIS at the Massachusetts General Hospital, similar systems have been installed at
the hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Pittsburgh Medical
Center and the Carolinas Medical Center (Crayton, 2004).
 It is important for business and social science researchers to understand RFID, Radio frequency
because it is likely to have a profound impact on how firms compete globally, identification
especially in terms of supply chain management. Of the pallets sent to Iraq 97 percent
have been shipped with RFID tags (Barlas, 2005). The largest area of adoption has been
in the retail industry (IDTechEX, 2006a, b), and approximately 1,500 RFID patents
have been issued since 1997. This technology can save billion of dollars for the world
businesses specially the first world countries that are ready to use that. Various 493
countries have started to use RFID in different forms and shapes.
In April 2004 Washington Hospital Center in Washington DC began a trial use of
RFID tags focusing on RFID usage in hallways and in emergency rooms. Washington
Hospital is using active UWB or ultra-wide band tags, developed by Parco Wireless, to
track medical devices in the hospital. Washington Hospital Center has the staff and
patients wear credit card sized RFID tags to obtain and maintain patient and
healthcare provider information (Crayton, 2004).
The potential benefits to RFID technology in the food industry are enormous.
Because each chip is unique to the specific box it is in, tracking the whereabouts of
products becomes much simpler. If a manufacturer recalls a batch of products, the
RFID tags for the containers affected can be flagged electronically. Eventually, grocery
retailers will not be able to sell recalled products because the register will not allow it
(Hall and Hampl, 2004). Looking further into the future we can see other sort of RFID
capability as such as: homes – equipped with “smart appliances” – will also be linked
to the network. Refrigerators will inform homeowners that the milk is expired; the
microwave will alert the consumer that the product about to be warmed was recalled
six hours earlier by the manufacturer. Even the pantry, if equipped, could print a
grocery list based on current inventory (Hall and Hampl, 2004).
The introduction of RFID technologies has brought much debate and speculation
about its potential impacts. A study conducted by the University of Texas at Austin
and sponsored by NXP shows the financial impacts of RFID in the US healthcare and
retail stores. The key findings of this study can be summarized in the following list:
.
companies in the retail and healthcare sectors have experienced, to date, a 900
percent rate of return (ROI) of their RFID investments;
.
current adoption levels of RFID at the pallet and item levels in retail currently
derive $12.05 billion in benefits from existing RFID applications;
.
retail consumers see a $2.63 billion annual cost savings benefit;
.
total benefits accruing to healthcare industry manufacturers, distributors, and
hospitals is equal to $45.9 billion;
.
improved patient care from RFID deployment is valued at $30.72 billion.; and
.
benefits to the healthcare consumer, through enhanced patient care, is estimated
at $165.12 billion.

Table I shows RFID contributions by dollar amounts on healthcare type industries.

Due to the fact that RFID is a very young technology in making impacts and
generating revenues for industries the extent of this contribution is very low.
The future seems to point in the direction of full incorporation of RFID tagging
with nearly all products, equipment, supplies, and people simply because of the wide
range of use of these tags (Angeles, 2005; Chopra and Sodhi, 2007; Riggins, 2006;
JHOM Sarma, 2004; Fish and Forrest, 2007). Even though the distanced future for RFID
25,5 technology seems very promising, the implementation of that and its uses in near
future are uncertain. Researchers (Angeles, 2005; Schwirn, 2006b) pointed to the fact
that the costs and ROI are too high for widespread implementation and that any
product that is lower than $15 in price would be a poor use of resources. What this
means is that many medical supplies in certain portions of the supply chain are simply
494 too low cost to justify using RFID technology. The article went further to say that
upstream manufacturers are not going to incorporate RFID in anything but the palate
level due to costs, leaving the down stream users without the RFID tags (Angeles,
2005; Schwirn, 2006b). Table II lists the application areas of RFID in health industry
and related fields.

4. RFID-enabled healthcare systems

This section is devoted to the review of RFID-based healthcare management systems.
The cases reviewed in this section are:
.
El Camino Hospital in Mountain View (Crayton, 2004).
.
Public views of mobile medical devices and services (Katz and Rice, 2009).
.
Children hospital (Crayton, 2004).
.
The social and organizational factors (Fisher and Monahan, 2008).
.
Psychiatric patient localization (Huang et al., 2008).
.
Humancentric RFID research (Masters and Michael, 2007).
.
Dietetic applications (Hall and Hampl, 2004).

4.1 Case 1 (El Camino Hospital in Mountain View)

California has established a state of the art healthcare system using RFID technology.
The system allows the hospital to uniformly track medications, which are scanned and
bar coded at the point of care. As a result of establishing the system, the hospital
claims to have one of the lowest error rates in the nation. Since establishing the system
it has increased its rate of clinical interventions-the number of times a pharmacist has
the opportunity to intervene in the drug-ordering process to prevent errors-by 250
percent, growing from 400 interventions per quarter to 1,200. A 1998 study showed
that the system helped to reduce medication error rates by 55 percent. Amid using the
RFID system, El Camino has automated their pharmacy system so that prescription
verifications can be done in 15 minutes or less. Therefore, reducing times and errors
that could occur from manual verifications. According to the El Camino Hospital CIO
Mark Zielazinski, “Reducing medical errors not only improves patient safety but also

Durations of
Rows Industries Amounts impacts

Table I. 1 Health care industry manufacturers, $45.9B (Angeles, To date

Industries classification distributors, and hospitals 2005)
with RFID type 2 Patient Care Industry $30.72B (Angeles, To date
contribution 2005)
Counts Application areas Author
Radio frequency
identification
1 Patient identification: problems and potential Murphy and Kay, 2004
solutions
2 RFID in the pharmaceutical supply chain RFID, 2005
3 Emergency room management Chen et al., 2008
4 El Camino Hospital in Mountain View Crayton, 2004 495
5 Public views of mobile medical devices and services Katz and Rice, 2009
6 Children Hospital Crayton, 2004
7 The social dimensions of RFID and organizational Fisher and Monahan, 2008
factors
8 Psychiatric Patient Localization Huang et al., 2008
9 RFID in the healthcare supply chain Kumar et al., 2009
10 Tags track surgical patients at Birmingham Bacheldor, 2007
Heartlands Hospital
11 Key drivers for the continued use of RFID Chen et al., 2008
technology in the emergency room
12 Intelligent environment for monitoring Alzheimer Corchado et al., 2008
patients, agent technology for health care
13 Incorporating radio frequency identification Crayton, 2004.
technology into the health care sector
14 Tagging along – RFID helps hospitals track assets Davis, 2004
and people
15 Radio frequency identification Applications for Hall and Hampl, 2004
dietetics professionals
16 A survey of agent-based intelligent decision support Foster, n.d.
systems to support clinical management and
research
17 Cephalon to tag cancer drug at point of manufacture O’Connor, 2007a
18 RFID technology in the health care and Schwirn, 2006a
pharmaceutical industry: drivers and players
19 RFID technology in the health care and Schwirn, 2006b
pharmaceutical industry: expectations
20 Evaluating the business value of RFID evidence Tzeng et al. (2007)
from five case studies
21 RFID applications in hospitals: a case study on a Wang et al., 2006
demonstration RFID project in a Taiwan hospital
22 Radio frequency identification applications in Wicks et al., 2006
hospital environments
23 Washington Hospital Center to quadruple its RFID Dade, 2007
expansion
24 RFID system is used for blood and plasma URL1 n.d.
applications including tracking and tracing blood
transfusions with a donor
25 On drugs and distributions Koleszar, 2004
26 RFID applications in healthcare Wicks et al., 2006
27 Hospitals start pilot-testing RFID to curb drug Gebhart, 2004
diversion
28 RFID extends to medical applications. Costlow, 2004
29 RFID-enabled medical equipment management Kohn and Henderson, 2004; Kohn, 2005
30 US food and drugs administration Card Technology Today, 2004 Table II.
31 RFID in biopharmaceutical supply chain Ahlund, 2005 Application areas of radio
(continued) frequency identification
JHOM Counts Application areas Author
25,5
32 Health care sees safety in RFID Collins, 2005
33 Pharmaceutical companies seek benefits of RFID RFID, 2005
34 The pharmaceutical industry turns to RFID as one RFID, 2005
cure for many problems
496 35 RFID and the perception of control: the consumer’s Gunther and Spiekermann, 2005
view
36 Leveraging radio frequency identification (RFID) Venkatesan and Grauer, 2004
technology to improve laboratory information
management.
37 The RFID and revolution – healthcare is ready to Fanberg, 2004
embrace this new technology
38 US RFID Markets for Healthcare Frost & Sullivan, 2004
39 Room for tracking – RFID technology finds the way Glabman, 2004
40 On a roll: RFID moves toward patient safety Neil, 2005
41 RFID to track high-cost items at Columbus Swedberg, 2007
Children’s Heart Center
42 Radio frequency tags for identifying legitimate drug Thompson, 2004
products discussed by tech industry
43 RFID in Healthcare: Poised for Growth BearingPoint, 2006
44 Applying RFID to patient care Cangialosi et al., 2007
45 Intel designs mobile platform for hospitals FinancialWire, 2006
46 “Behind the hype”, Hospitals and Health Networks Gearon, 2005
47 RFID and the future of pharmaceutical supply Koroneos, 2006
48 RFID implementation not moving fast enough, FDA Young, 2006
49 Using RFID technologies to capture simulation data Miller et al. (2006)
in a hospital emergency department
Table II. 50 The use and implications of humancentric RFID Masters and Michael, 2007

provides a huge benefit to the hospital. The average cost of an error can range from
$4,000 to $12,000 per instance. If only 1 percent of our interventions stop an error, that
can quickly add up to half a million dollars”.

4.2 Case 2 (public views of mobile medical devices and services)

Katz and Rice (2009) have conducted a research on the use of RFID technology in
healthcare and presented the results of their work in their article entitled “Public views
of mobile medical devices and services: a US national survey of consumer sentiments
towards RFID healthcare technology”. A 2007 national public opinion survey of 1,404
Americans revealed variations in sentiments concerning the desirability of several
mobile health care technologies based on RFID. The survey appears to be the first
reasonably national public opinion survey of US adults concerning their attitudes
towards mobile health care technology. The survey revealed high levels of interest in
emergency intervention services, but much less so in health information and
monitoring services. Interest in RFID personal medical technology was positively
associated with high levels of trust in others and social support. However, at the same
time, a small minority were negatively disposed towards such applications.
One of the questions that were taken into consideration is: what is the preliminary
interest in cell phone and RFID-based health care services? Although many had
believed that the attachment of RFID technology would be viewed by broad sectors of Radio frequency
the public as undesirable or unacceptable, it was found that: identification
.
Public opposition to RFID technology does not appear to be widespread, and in
fact there is enthusiasm for some applications.
.
Evidence suggests that attachment of RFID devices to the body is not viewed as
objectionable by much of the public. Specifically, placement of RFID-based 497
medical informatics devices on the arm by tape vs as part of one’s mobile phone
does not seem to affect acceptability judgments except in a small percentage of
the sample.

4.3 Case 3 (RFID impacts in hospitals)

The social and organizational factors that contribute to the success or failure of RFID
systems in hospitals must be further analyzed. The implications of RFID systems, such
as privacy concerns and work intensification for nursing and other hospital staff,
should be taken into account from the outset, especially during the design and
implementation of the technology. What is known about the subject (Fisher and
Monahan, 2008)?
(1) Information technologies, such as RFID-based systems, are being routinely
integrated into hospital infrastructure in order to increase the efficiency and
effectiveness of health care delivery.
(2) RFID systems can be used in hospitals to locate equipment, verify the identity
of patients during medical procedures, and collect data on staff workflow to find
inefficiencies in current hospital operations, but little empirical evidence exists
on how to implement the systems effectively.
(3) RFID systems do not adapt easily to hospital settings because the infrastructure
of hospitals – in terms of space, equipment, personnel, and patients – is much
more complicated than factory or warehouse settings.
(4) Most of the literature focuses on the technical efficacy of RFID systems, not the
social and organizational effects of such systems.
(5) A conceptual framework is developed for analyzing the host of social and
organizational factors that contribute to the success or failure of RFID systems
in hospitals.
(6) Hospitals implementing RFID systems tend to experience two types of
constraint:
.
the mal-adaptation of the technological system to the hospital setting; and
.
the organizational challenges for hospitals to utilize the system.
(7) RFID systems introduce a key ethical concern regarding privacy because of the
surveillance potential of the technology. The extent to which surveillance
becomes a reality is dependent on the policies and practices developed in each
hospital setting.
(8) Specific recommendations are detailed to soften negative organizational effects
of RFID implementation in hospitals.
JHOM 4.4 Case 4 (children hospital)
25,5 In Nashville, Tennessee the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital’s ICU had a history for
missing equipment and unacceptable medical error rates. To solve this dilemma, the
hospital piloted a six-month study using RFID technology. The RFID system was used
for real-time tracking and location identification of movable and fixed assets, and
detection, identification and tracking of assets as they are utilized throughout the
498 hospital. “Hospital equipment gets moved around a lot, and people lose track of where
it is”, says Jim Shmerling, executive director and CEO of Vanderbilt Children’s
Hospital. “We spent a lot of time and money looking for that equipment”. After
participating in this study using RFID, Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital was able to
show that RFID systems can prevent the loss of equipment. According to Jim
Shmerling, executive director and CEO of Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, the pilot was
so successful he hopes to have a system in place at both Children’s Hospital and
Vanderbilt University Hospital by the end of the study year.

4.5 Case 5 (psychiatric patient localization)

Psychiatric patients often cannot control their actions, occasionally resulting in
dangerous behavior. Therefore, continuously monitoring patients is crucial to
treating psychiatric patients. For patients with relatively severe psychiatric
disorders, care centers are regarded essential. Effectively caring for of such
psychiatric patients should include protecting patients from danger, being aware of
treatment progress, and preventing patients from leaving a care center. To achieve
these care objectives, radio frequency identification (RFID) devices, which are small
and relatively cheap, can effectively monitor the location of psychiatric patients
Huang et al., 2008).
Collaboration between field generators, readers and tags generates the required
functions in using RFID for psychiatric patient localization. The field generator
continually transmits trigger signals within its transmission range. When a tag, which
a patient wears, receives a trigger signal from a field generator, the tag responds to a
reader with its own ID and ID of the field generator that issues the trigger. Based on
field generator IDs that a tag responds to, the location of the patient wearing the tag
can be estimated approximately. However, in recent RFID based localization systems,
certain phenomena impact the reliability of signal transmission and decrease the
feasibility of the localization system (Huang et al., 2008).

4.6 Case 6 (RFID and Humancentric applications)

In an article entitled “Lend me your arms: the use and implications of humancentric
RFID” researchers Masters and Michael (2007) have studied the applications of
RFID in humancentric. By employing usability context analyses in control,
convenience and care-related application areas, researchers began to piece together a
cohesive view of the current development state of humancentric RFID, as detached
from predictive conjecture. A care-related humancentric application of RFID is any
human use of an implanted RFID transponder where function is associated with
medicine, health or wellbeing. Initially, it was Warwick (2000) who envisioned that
with the RFID implants paraplegics would finally get the chance to walk. Then is
the work of Kobetic et al. (1999) who documented the study of a paraplegic male
who had muscular stimuli delivered via an implanted RFID controlled electrical
simulation system. Although not allowing the mobility which Warwick dreamt of, Radio frequency
results did include increased energy and fitness for the patient (Masters and identification
Michael, 2007).
Outside the research sphere, much literature centers on eight volunteers who were
implanted with commercial VeriChip RFID devices in 2002 trials. Researchers such as
Murray (2002), Black (2002) and Gengler (2002) were able to document medical reasons
behind the implantation of four subjects. Supplemented by press releases however, all 499
reports of the trials were journalistic, rather than research-based. In contrast,
non-trivial research is found in the work of Michael (2003). Her thesis uses a case study
methodology, and a system of innovation framework, to discuss the adaptation of
auto-ID for medical implants (Masters and Michael, 2007).

4.7 Case 7 (dietetic applications)

Applications of RFID for dietetics professionals will be innumerable. Dietetics
professionals can anticipate personal digital assistants and other handheld devices to
be equipped with RFID transceivers. Research opportunities will emerge as future
applications, advantages, and pitfalls of these new technologies surface. Like all health
professionals, dietetics professionals will quickly incorporate RFID into daily practice
as new uses arise and radio devices appear in places never before seen or imagined
(Hall and Hampl, 2004).

5. Management implementation
RFID is a flexible technology and has many attractive attributes that can be integrated
into different systems. It can uniquely identify any object on which a tag is attached.
The tag can be read in any orientation. RFID-based systems can be integrated into
existing healthcare systems to improve the efficiency of the main processes carried out
in any hospital/emergency room and increase the quality of services to be provided.
The ability of RFID to uniquely identify every item is very suitable for
hospitals/emergency rooms. An RFID-based healthcare system would bring with
itself many properties:
.
speed up the finding of equipment such as patient wheelchairs;
.
improve the stock control of the medications and surgical needs;
.
ability to track down misplaced surgical items and hospital materials;
.
increase the security at sensitive entrances;
.
bring convenience to hospital system;
.
improves hospital work flow;
.
increase staff productivity; and
.
enhance patient service.

The global challenges that RFID is facing with are human expert challenges, privacy
issues, technology challenges, standard challenges, pattern challenges, cost challenges,
infrastructure challenges, ROI challenges, barcode to RFID migration challenges,
management commitment challenges, and technical support challenges. There are not
many skilled RFID professionals that can help to set up appropriate systems to
construct suitable applications.
JHOM Main obstacles of RFID can be classified as:
25,5 .
standardization for RFID is not yet completed;
.
early adopters of RFID are still managing consciously;
.
many potential adopters are waiting on the sidelines for proofs of successful and
safe adoptions;
500 .
compatibility with legacy systems is not addressed seriously;
.
security issues need to be resolved;
.
complexity and high cost for coverage in large plants prevent fast adoption;
.
power supply is always a great concern for wireless systems;
.
the reliability of wireless system remains unproven and it is considered too risky
for process control;
.
lack of experienced staff for troubleshooting; and
.
future trends of the technology.

6. Conclusion
This paper has discussed about the active and passive tags, the costs of tags, its
producers, and frequencies. Active RFID tagging has evolved to be a necessary
technology for business productivity improvement efforts and security in the
enterprise. Active RFID will complement and complete the capabilities of passive
tags. In security, active tags can provide automation for immediate visibility into the
activities in and around an enterprise. In spite of the advantages of the RFID
technology, there exist some technical and managerial problems for RFID
applications including the reliability, identification range, implementation cost and
EPC standards. As for the health care supply chain applications, the RFID tagging
mechanisms can be classified into item tagging, case tagging and pallet tagging
where the RFID tags are attached onto items, cases and pallets, respectively. Since
the unit price of an RFID tag is still too high for organizations to afford the item
tagging mechanism. For this reason, at the current status, the RFID tags are mainly
applied to reusable pallets, cartons or cases and the identity of each item on the pallet
(or case) cannot be accurately revealed.
RFID technology can provide a variety of benefits for healthcare system and its
management. There are a number of ongoing trials and studies at hospitals and
healthcare centers around the world utilizing and integrating RFID into their hospital
information systems. Because of RFID studies and trials, it has been found that RFID
elicits improvements in inventory management, patient safety, and security. Some
hospitals have found that through RFID systems, medical errors have been reduced,
which results in a reduction in costs to run medical programs. Positive patient
identification can be achieved through the use of an RFID system. This is an essential
policy for a hospital since the leading cause of death due to medical errors is caused by
patient misidentification, and specimen or medication misidentification. These errors
result in billions of dollars in national costs per year. Reducing medical errors not only
increases patient safety, but also provides a huge benefit to a hospital. Each type of
RFID system can be tailored to fit the needs of all healthcare programs. Every hospital
is encouraged to integrate their existing system with RFID in order to reap the benefits
of the evolution of healthcare technology’s marvel, RFID.
 RFID is a solution that enables a nurse, a technician, or an authorized employee to Radio frequency
easily determine the location of equipment, run queries or reports to provide inventory identification
information, parametric searches, graphical representation to identify the location of
the equipment or the asset, and also manage the service and maintenance of the
equipment using any computer tied into the network. The results of these applications
are beginning to provide proof that using RFID technology in the healthcare industry
provides significant labor savings, improved efficiency, and a good return on 501
investment.
Financial savings from RFID technology with regard to equipment tracking in
healthcare industry can be stated as:
.
not being able to locate the equipment, hospitals buy extra or replacement
devices for availability, which causes high annual spending and many devices
are left unutilized or under utilized. Using RFID to manage these devices
increases the utilization rate, cuts annual spending, allows divestment of
under-utilized assets, and improves confidence that equipment is always be
available when needed;
.
with RFID equipment tracking in place, expensive medical devices can be
quickly brought into control by alerts based on location and notification when a
device leaves a predefined area;
.
equipment management with RFID can eliminate inefficient, long manual
searches for assets that need maintenance or need to be returned to central
processing units, and can maintain up-to date equipment status; and
.
with a decrease in patient wait time, there is improved patient care, more
employee satisfaction for nurses, technicians, doctors, etc. lower per-patient cost
of service delivery, effective work flow, and operational efficiency with support
staff always at hand.

RFID is an emerging technology with full benefits to be emerged in several years to

health industries around the world. It will bring a good opportunity for improving
healthcare supply chain efficiency and hence the safety of the public in return. Large
US companies and many large worldwide companies will be the big beneficiaries of
such technologies soon. This means that many companies will take the advantage of
this technology to increase their profitability and enhance productivity. This is an
indication that larger companies will get larger and richer companies will get richer. If
RFID is to achieve the level of adoption that has been forecasted, it is important to
understand the capabilities and limitations of the technology as it evolves, the different
types of applications where it can be used, and how business value is realized resulting
in impact to the organization and the value chain.
A full-scale deployment of RFID technology in healthcare and managed care
industries will provide compelling benefits and competitive advantages to the
industry. It points to the essentiality of the situation that industries must start to
explore some specific applications areas for RFID. In this regard, the main objective
should be to gain an understanding of the technology and to acquire capabilities in this
area. Initial projects should be targeted in areas where tracking products is likely to
provide the greatest insights. This paper is conducted on the healthcare topics using
reported cases from the industry.
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Further reading 505

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identecsolutions.com
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Corresponding author
Yahia Zare Mehrjerdi can be contacted at: yazm2000@yahoo.com

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