Positive Patient Identification using RFID and Wireless Networks

Abstract

The increased focus on patient safety in hospitals has yielded a flood of new technologies and tools seeking to improve the quality of patient care at the point-of-care. Hospitals are complex institutions by nature, and are constantly challenged to improve the quality of healthcare delivered to patients while trying to reduce the rate of medical errors and improve patient safety. Here a simple mistake such as patient misidentification, specimen misidentification, wrong medication, or wrong blood transfusion can cause the loss of a patient's life. The focus of this paper is the implementation and evaluation of a handheld-based patient identification system that uses radio frequency identification (RFID) and 802.11b wireless networks to identify patients. In this approach, each patient is given a RFID wristband which contains demographic information (patient ID number, patient summary, hospital code) of the patient. A handheld device equipped with 802.11b wireless connectivity and a RFID reader is then used by the medical staff to read the patient's wristband and identify the patient.