The massive chip card medical care centers that characterize our times have advantages, but also create new challenges. By using RFID in hospitals one can help and protect patients by providing them with a duress button, monitoring their location and ensure they receive the proper treatment and medication they need in good time. This system can also boost the institution’s efficiency by providing the location of staff, andincreasing their safety.
For patients, an active RFID tag can serve as a duress button. It can also ensure the fail-safe identification of a patient – including those unconscious, infants, or suffering dementia – to prevent the wrong administration of medication, while providing medical staff all the updated information on the patient, even when taken to a different ward of the hospital.
The system can also monitor the movements of patients who could pose a danger to themselves or others, and make sure the babies are paired with the right mothers and not taken by unauthorized persons.
RFID can be used in healthcare institutions to save patients and institutions time and money by following and moderating a patient's progress, such as in the case of a newly admitted person who needs to undergo a series of tests. The real-time data will show the person where to go, based on the situation in the various “stops” over the route, thus creating a flow of order and hopefully preventing annoying backlogs. We already told you about the importance of staff members washing their hands, a mandatory action that can be monitored with RFID. Can’t harm reminding.
Besides protection from bacteria, staff in hospitals is safeguarded with RFID duress buttons for the cases of attacks by patients or their family members. Their position can also be seen when they are carrying RFID tags, which enables management to better allocate them. It can even provide medical insurers data on how much time medical staff spends with each patient.
