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RFID Moves Beyond Assets


By Beckie Kelly Schuerenberg, Senior Editor January 1, 2008

Columbus (Ind.) Regional Hospital executives wanted to get the most bang for the buck from their new nurse call system.

So when they discovered that the technology, from Rauland-Borg Corp., Skokie, Ill., can use radio frequency identification technology to track clinicians to enable them to better communicate with each other, they came up with some other ideas for how RFID could help improve workflow and patient care.

Before implementing the integrated system they went to the RFID technology vendor, Versus Technology Inc., Traverse City, Mich., with a laundry list of proposed features.

For example, they wanted to track emergency department patients and issue a timestamp when they reached certain destinations, says Roni Kagley, systems analyst. Additionally, they wanted to create alerts for ED nurses based on analysis of the timestamps, such as if a patient has been waiting more than 15 minutes without being seen, she adds.

During 2005, Columbus Regional's I.T. staff worked with Versus and South Western Communications Inc., Newburgh, Ind., to integrate the new features with the nurse call system and install an enterprisewide RFID network. Now the hospital gives every ED patient an RFID badge at registration. Clinicians also wear badges. Each patient badge is embedded with select information via an interface with its admission-discharge-transfer system, from McKesson Corp., San Francisco.

The badges emit infrared signals containing location data every three to five seconds. The signals are picked up by the RFID network and transmitted to a management application. Nurses use the system to view a hospital floor plan that displays where all ED patients and clinicians are-and how long they've been there.

Though the additional features have provided many efficiency and patient care benefits, Columbus Regional is still on a learning curve with the technology, Kagley says. "We've had to wait to get enough data in the system to use some custom reporting tools we created," she says. "But we already know RFID has enabled our ED nurses to be more efficient."

RFID has carved out a niche in health care as a technology that can be used to electronically track equipment or people. Some early adopters reported major savings by using it to determine the real-time location of assets and keep track of equipment that's often misplaced and needlessly repurchased.

As more hospitals continue to tinker with RFID, the technology is proving its worth in a growing number of applications, including tracking patients and staff, and for more specialized tasks such as tracking paper medical files.

The bottom line: RFID is moving beyond the perception of being solely an asset tracker and increasingly being viewed as a technology that can improve care.

"Some hospitals put RFID in to help track objects, but are now discovering secondary uses for it," says Patrick Rossignol, principal at New York-based Deloitte Consulting. "The technology has the capability to provide time and motion analysis that can be used to produce recommendations to improve processes. If you look at RFID in terms of patient safety, the ability to act as a patient locator is compelling."

Columbus Regional Hospital's RFID-based nurse call system uses multiple technologies to locate patients, staff and assets.

Its patient and staff badges emit both infrared and RFID signals. IR doesn't penetrate through walls as RFID signals do, so the badges send IR signals to indicate their location with room-level accuracy. The badges also have a button that when pressed emits an RFID signal.

Columbus Regional nurses press the RFID buttons on patient badges for other communication, such as to indicate to the system the time they saw a patient. The function is a form of "passive" RFID technology, which requires human intervention to transmit identifiable information.

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