Health board shelves patient RFID trial

Hawke's Bay Hospital has canned a trial that would have seen patients in the emergency department tagged with RFID (radio frequency ID) chips to help track their movements.

The district health board planned to use the electronic tags, monitored by wireless scanners, to identify bottlenecks in the hospital system and help it better manage beds and roster staff.

But spokeswoman Anna Kirk says plans for the trial were abandoned after the DHB decided it would not reveal any new information. "We would be following the patient's movements from A to B to C, but we already knew what that was."

Hawke's Bay DHB is part of a Health Ministry project to improve patient flow and experiences in the health system and the board decided other initiatives would be a better use of resources, she says.

"We'll look at triage and other aspects of the patient journey and put all that together in one big picture."

The board will consider investing in RFID technology at a later date and will continue to work with the HealthIT Cluster and software company Emendo, which were to have been involved with the trial, Ms Kirk says.

HealthIT Cluster programme manager John Tailby says RFID technology has a range of valuable applications, but it is important business processes are thoroughly analysed before technology is implemented.

"Otherwise you're going to deliver something that doesn't meet your needs."

The cluster is working on a range of IT initiatives with DHBs, including a proposal put to the Health Ministry to pilot electronic lab orders and results – which would mean GPs could track lab test orders and results, including those ordered by other medical professionals.

"It would be extremely useful to know what had been ordered for a patient. Some international studies suggest there's quite a lot of repeat test orders due to a lack of repeat information."

Hawke's Bay DHB's decision is the second major setback for RFID technology in two years.

The Pathfinder group, a consortium backed by Fonterra, Progressive Enterprises and The Warehouse, last year indefinitely deferred plans to run a trial that would have seen manufacturers, transport companies and retailers ship tagged goods to one another.