RFID trial revised

Waitemata district health board has revised plans to trial patient and staff tracking technology, opting for a more cost-effective pilot that will see equipment traced first.

The technology could improve communication and efficiency in hospitals.

Waitemata District Health Board announced in May it was shopping for a real-time location tracking system, which would see patients, clinicians and equipment in its Lakeview extension tagged with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in a trial.

Information consultant Andrew Cave said after working with its preferred system supplier it would now opt for a pilot that tested the technology across the organisation, "rather than in a fairly confined physical area".

The DHB planned to trial the technology with equipment first and then patients and staff, once they had had a chance to see it in action. "There's an acceptance barrier to work through."

It was still discussing with the vendor how exactly the pilot would work, but it would be more cost-effective, he said.

"We'll be targeting a particular type of equipment with a much simpler workflow, but it'll be covering a larger physical area."

The vendor could supply the application as an online service, so the DHB did not have to purchase the system.

"Our cost would be making sure there's wireless coverage in the places we need it but we are implementing wireless slowly anyway." Any cost for RFID tags would depend on how many it wanted and how many the vendor was prepared to buy back.

Accessing the application as an online service could mean other DHBs could adopt the system down the track, he said.

"Knowing the actual rather than the allocated location of a patient is of big value and knowing someone else is hoarding ten infusion pumps on one ward which is preventing admissions to another ward because they haven't got any is of huge value.

"It's amazing technology, I'm convinced it's going to be prevalent in healthcare. It's a matter of timing the uptake of it." Health IT Cluster chief executive Dougal McKechnie said the cluster had scoped RFID patient tracking in 2007 with a range of organisations including IBM and Christchurch health management software firm Emendo and that study identified significant benefits, in particular in emergency departments.

Medical Technology Association chief executive Faye Sumner said a national solution for tracking medical equipment was preferable and it was working with DHBs and back-office systems and services provider Health Benefits to develop an electronic ordering and tracking system.

Hawke's Bay Hospital canned an RFID trial in 2008 after deciding that tagging patients would not have revealed any new information.

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