Minimize infections at hospitals with RFID

Filed in archive Healthcare on August 20, 2009

© JoeNation08

Don't be shocked if I tell you that spreading of infections is a common phenomenon in hospitals and generally the culprits are hospital employees who emerge as biggest infection carriers.

In order to tackle this issue University of Miami-Jackson Health System Center for Patient Safety is carrying out an RFID pilot for tracking hand washing compliance of hospital employees.

The system keeps an eye on who all washed their hands and when. In case a doctor or nurse attends a patient without washing his or her hands a reminder alarm would go off. The system uses hybrid infrared RFID tags along with interrogators to deal with the problem of infections acquired at hospitals.

Study indicates that hygiene of the hand plays an important role in reducing chances of infection but in case of US ten to sixty percent of medical professionals overlook this important requirement.

As a part of the pilot health care providers have been asked to wear battery powered tags where the tag comprises twin chips - one for RFID and the other for infrared transmissions. Both transmit unique ID number linked to the name of the staff in the back end system and the badges just transmit IR signals which ensure sensors read tags only within its range. This makes sure that stray signals are not picked up.

Whenever a member of the staff presses the hand sanitizing dispenser it leads to activation of the sensor installed in the dispenser, scanning of IR signal and capturing the unique ID number of the tag. The sensor transmits the badge ID number along with sensor tag ID, date, time and number to a reader attached to the computer and on the basis of this data a conformation is received regarding hands being washed by medical professionals. Also the system keeps a tab on the time passed between sanitizing of hands and arrival at the bed of the patient. The time limit is twenty seconds and in case the hands have not been washed the medical professional is warned by a computer generated voice asking him or her to sanitize their hands.

I believe this system would go a long way in controlling spread of infection which is a common phenomenon in hospitals without creating any sort of rift between medical professionals or patients.