RFID Simplifies Improvements to Hospital Bedside Care

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May 31, 2009 12:00 AM PDT


by Matt Gillespie and Highland Mary Mountain, Senior Software Engineer, Intel Corporation

New Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) functionality built into the Intel® Mobile Platform Software Development Kit (SDK) simplifies developing solutions that can improve the efficiency of healthcare and prevent dangerous mistakes. The technology can improve the quality of these solutions and speed time to market.

Overview: RFID Advances for the Digital Health Enterprise

The Intel® Mobile Platform Software Development Kit (SDK) 1.2 for Windows* introduces proximity-detection technology based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). This addition enables a new generation of patient-identification solutions for the Digital Health market. Integrated with the common API employed by the rest of the SDK, these new capabilities allow software developers to rapidly integrate RFID technology into mobile solutions for this market segment. It also helps developers create a single solution that supports RFID readers from a variety of manufacturers¹ while achieving fast time-to-market, high performance, and state-of-the-art features.

Patient-identification solutions built with the Intel Mobile Platform SDK help to address the inefficiencies and potential for error associated with traditional patient identification based on handwritten wristbands. RFID technology provides the basis for solutions that are also superior in many ways to those using barcodes, by eliminating many of the limitations of barcode technology and offering increased extensibility.

Because the Intel Mobile Platform SDK affords developers the ability to quickly produce efficient, reliable, and adaptive software, it supports rapid integration of Automatic Identification Technology into the enterprise environments of major hospitals. The SDK allows developers without specialized knowledge to readily use information retrieved from RFID readers in applications that communicate with other devices on a wireless or wired network, allowing integration with the full range of enterprise solutions.

In a recent survey², 74% of respondents in management positions within healthcare organizations indicated that they view RFID and Real-Time Location as emerging technologies that will improve healthcare processes. Information architects and decision makers at healthcare solution providers are well advised to consider integrating RFID technology into their offerings, and this new set of SDK capabilities helps them to realize this opportunity.

Healthcare Opportunities from Automatic Identification Technology

The escalation of healthcare costs has created market pressure to increase the efficiency of patient care while continuing to increase quality. One means of addressing that challenge has been the advancement of computing solutions in various Digital Health initiatives that bring novel uses of technology to the hospital environment.

A fundamental set of requirements that nurses must satisfy on a daily basis is embodied in the 'five rights': getting the right medication, in the right dose, by the right route, to the right patient at the right time. Errors in administering medication can have grave impacts on a patient's health, and the challenges to nurses of maintaining accuracy on long shifts while juggling multiple patients are substantial.

Despite the vital importance of accuracy in meeting this set of requirements, nurses too often must rely upon hand-written orders from doctors, matched up to hand-written patient wristbands. Those wristbands may be partially illegible, and the manual transcription of data when they are made can introduce errors. Mismatching patients to the proper care can result in consequences such as the following:

  • Incorrect medications or missed doses
  • Use of the incorrect blood type
  • Mixed-up pathology samples
  • Incorrect surgical procedures (e.g., wrong parts of the body operated on or removed)

 

Automatic Identification Technology replaces the use of manual patient identification using hand-written wristbands, which can dramatically reduce the prevalence of errors and improve efficiency. It involves tracking the patient at every stage of their treatment, using a digital means of identification that is machine-read and allows matching the actual patient to their medical chart and physician's orders, as well as non-medical aspects of their care such as meals and billing.

Increased accuracy and efficiency that arises from this model improves patient care and helps to avoid hospital liabilities associated with mistakes. While many hospitals are considering technology for patient identification, most hospitals have not yet implemented it. These factors have developed a substantial market opportunity for providers of Automatic Identification Technology solutions.

RFID Raises the Bar for Patient-Identification Solutions

The use of RFID as the basis for Automatic Identification Technology platforms provides distinct advantages over barcodes, the other major technology employed in this area. For example, barcodes require a nurse or other staff member who wishes to identify a patient to uncover the patient's wristband, rotate the barcode into view, ensure line-of-sight between the scanner and wristband, and then aim and activate the scanner. Similar steps must be taken to identify medications or other barcoded materials, and damaged or wrinkled barcodes create difficulties in the process.

Figure 1. A patient identification bracelet that incorporates RFID technology

By contrast, RFID tags embedded in hospital wristbands, as shown in Figure 1, do not require hospital personnel to come into physical contact with the patient (reducing the risk of infection), and no line-of-sight is required—proximity to the patient and medication is sufficient for immediate confirmation, and RFID tags are substantially more durable than barcodes. A comparison between RFID and barcodes as the basis of patient-identification solutions are summarized below:

Barcode Characteristics RFID Characteristics
Requires line-of-sight Proximity is sufficient
Requires manual scanning Scanning can be done automatically
Limited to scanning a single code at a time Allows scanning multiple tags simultaneously
Read only Read/write
Easily damaged More durable
Low cost: approximately USD .01 per tag Higher cost: approximately USD .50 per tag (but decreasing)

 

By allowing multiple tags to be scanned automatically without requiring line-of-sight between the tag and reader, RFID improves on the efficiency of barcode solutions, also allowing operators to detect the location of tagged patients, equipment, and other items, even if they are out of sight. In addition, the ability to append or remove data to an existing RFID tag allows staff members to modify information that is directly read from a patient's wristband, such as indicating that a patient has been placed on bed-rest or has been assigned dietary restrictions. Similarly, tags on supplies can be tagged to indicate that they are designated for transfer to another facility or for repair/replacement.

These advantages can help to contain operating costs by improving productivity, reducing inventory shrink, and tracking equipment such as IV stands and pumps, wheelchairs, and portable test equipment. Because RFID tags are more durable than barcodes, they are well suited to long-term use on equipment. While the cost of an RFID tag is substantially higher than that of a barcode, the cost of RFID tags continues to decrease as the technology is more widely deployed and manufacturing technologies advance.

Survey respondents2 in management positions within healthcare organizations reported a wide range of business benefits that they expected to achieve within their organizations from the implementation of RFID and Real-Time Location solutions. Chief among the expected business benefits rated as "Very Important" were improving patient safety (67%), improving productivity (48%), improving patient-flow management (48%), and improving business processes (45%). In addition, nearly half of respondents (43%) are looking for a strategic advantage from the technology.

Those same respondents also identified a range of technology advantages that they expected to achieve from the implementation of RFID and Real-Time Location solutions. The top expected technology advantages rated as "Very Important" were improved data accuracy (54%), improved security (47%), increased automation (46%), and real-time inventory (46%).

These expectations on the part of the survey respondents indicate that decision makers within healthcare organizations perceive substantial business and technology benefits available from the implementation of RFID technology. That finding suggests that substantial adoption of RFID technology in this field may position solution providers to benefit from this emerging trend within the industry.

Robust API Simplifies High-Quality RFID Development

For solution providers that choose to develop RFID solutions, the Intel Mobile Platform SDK provides distinct advantages by increasing the ability to produce high-quality software quickly. The conventional means of enabling applications to retrieve information from RFID readers by making serial calls to device drivers is arcane and cumbersome. In addition to slowing down the development effort, this added layer of complexity requires a specialized skill set on the part of the development team, which can itself be a barrier to entry for many development organizations.

The Intel Mobile Platform SDK, on the other hand, provides a robust Application Programming Interface (API) that is readily usable by mainstream software developers, as shown in the interface in Figure 2. This API dramatically simplifies the process of passing information to and from the RFID reader, reducing overall solution complexity and decreasing time to market. Using the Intel Mobile Platform SDK, developers can rapidly create code that transfers information from the reader device into the higher-level application code that makes use of it in the context of the larger application.

Figure 2. A rudimentary interface shows how developers can create read/write functionality for RFID tags using the Intel® Mobile Platform SDK

Without requiring a specialized skill set, the SDK abstracts RFID-specific tasks away from the larger development effort. By obtaining robust RFID functionality within the larger framework of the Intel Mobile Platform SDK, developers are to bring robust mobile solutions that integrate next-generation patient-identification technology to market quickly.

Intel® Mobile Platform SDK Features Streamline Development Tasks

RFID is directly integrated with other functionality within the SDK that gives developers access to classes, instances, properties, and methods that allow application code easily to obtain information from other devices in the hardware platform, such as batteries, network adapters, displays, storage, and processors. These capabilities enable developers to focus on business logic and product features, while allowing the SDK to handle low-level tasks such as interacting with the RFID reader and other hardware components.

Because the Intel Mobile Platform SDK draws from the hardware expertise of Intel engineers, it helps to enable excellent utilization of system resources. For example, applications can readily make effective use of memory resources and balance power and performance for maximum battery life. A common programming interface with consistent object models, naming conventions, and parameters across programming languages allows deployment on multiple platforms with a minimum of recoding. It is also engineered to simplify the development of advanced mobile functionality, such as allowing transparent management of network connections, allowing background synchronization without user involvement.

The SDK provides the ability for applications to monitor system events such as obtaining and losing connectivity, increased or decreased bandwidth, and going on or off external power. This ability to receive and respond to events and threshold notifications enables developers to make their applications context-aware, which is useful for adding featu res such as restricting resource- or bandwidth-intensive operations such as software updates and virus scans to periods when the device is placed in a docking station with a high-bandwidth connection.

RFID Stimulates Integration of Enterprise-Wide Healthcare Solutions

RFID solutions enable isolated information silos associated with various aspects of patient care to be integrated, reducing dependency on manual procedures. RFID wristbands identify patients throughout their stay at a hospital or other healthcare institution, enabling staff to locate and identify them instantly. This capability can interact with external systems, to create a holistic solution that improves efficiency and accuracy throughout the business, in addition to the advantages directly associated with the quality of patient care.

For example, the hospital's entire supply chain can be integrated with the RFID system, allowing automatic re-ordering of drugs and supplies when inventories are low, in addition to matching RFID tags on those supplies to those on the wristband of the patient for whom they are intended. RFID can also be used to flag expired medications and to control access to drug inventories. Similarly, orders for tests and medications can be integrated with systems for hospital administration, ensuring correct billing and automatically tracking insurance benefits.

To accommodate suppliers and environments that use various technologies, including identification using barcoding, integrators should consider the use of standards-based, loosely coupled technologies such as web services as the basis for their solutions. To that end, the Intel Mobile Platform SDK 1.2 for Windows is compatible with the C# and Java* languages using a wide range of development technologies and platforms, including the Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1, Sun Microsystems JDK* 1.4.2 or higher, and IBM Workplace Client Technology*, Micro Edition 5.7.1. Solutions that use the SDK can also benefit from the full array of Intel® Software Development Products, such as compilers, VTune™ Performance Analyzers, and performance libraries.

The Intel Mobile Platform SDK, including RFID functionality, enables solutions to take excellent advantage of Intel® platforms, to optimize the price/performance, scalability, and manageability of solutions using mobile devices such as tablets, handhelds, and ultra-mobile PCs. It is also well suited to solutions that include the deployment of devices based on the mobile clinical assistant platform recently introduced by Intel, an emerging class of hardware devices dedicated to use in medical environments.

Products based on the mobile clinical assistant platform are designed specifically for use in patient-care environments, with exterior casings that can be disinfected with sprays or wipes to avoid cross-contamination. The platform specification accommodates RFID technology for the identification of nursing personnel, patients, medications, equipment, and supplies. It can also include a digital camera, Bluetooth technology, and wireless networking, enabling a new generation of flexible, extensible devices for patient care.

Conclusion

New capabilities of the Intel Mobile Platform SDK enable developers to integrate RFID functionality into their mobile applications easily and without specialized knowledge, reducing solution complexity and decreasing time to market. The healthcare industry is poised to benefit from RFID solutions, creating significant market opportunities for solution developers and system integrators.

By deploying patient-identification technologies based on RFID as point-of-care solutions, healthcare providers can decrease the level of medication and procedural errors to their patients, as well as increasing staff productivity. RFID technology can also be readily used in many other aspects of hospital administration, such as inventory tracking, billing, and the identification of lab samples.

RFID is fully integrated into a wide array of other functionality within the SDK that assists in the development of robust mobile applications. Using this product, developers can abstract low-level tasks away from the development process, allowing improved focus on adding features that address specific business needs. Intel developed this software functionality in tandem with client hardware platforms such as the mobile clinical assistant platform, providing the basis for continuing innovation in Digital Health technologies.

Organizations or individuals interested in Intel Mobile Platform SDK can download an open source version on ISN.

Additional Resources

The following materials provide a point of departure for further research on this topic:

  • Intel® Mobile Platform Software Development Kit product information page provides exhaustive technical detail, as well as links for free evaluation or purchase of the product.
  • Healthcare Research and Solutions from Intel are helping to accelerate improvements in healthcare quality by delivering technology solutions to enhance health and wellness.
  • RFID and Intel®-based Solutions gives an overview of Intel research into standards-based RFID solutions with academic and industry leaders.
  • Intel Mobile Developer Community provides links to technical documentation for mobilizing software applications, as well as community forums and blogs on mobility topics.

 

1 BearingPoint Inc. RFID in Healthcare Survey, December 2005.

2 RFID interface is available from the Intel Mobile Platform SDK starting with version 1.2.
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Note: Intel® Mobile Platform SDK 1.2 ONLY provides binding interface, property and methods for RFID. There's no default implementation of this interface. Users need to define their own RFID instance provider based on RFID specification.

 

About the Authors

Matt Gillespie is an independent technical author and editor working out of the Chicago area and specializing in emerging hardware and software technologies. Before going into business for himself, Matt developed training for software developers at Intel Corporation and worked in Internet Technical Services at California Federal Bank. He spent his early years as a writer and editor in the fields of financial publishing and neuroscience.

 

Highland Mary Mountain is a Senior Software Engineer at Intel Corporation’s Chandler Arizona site (Phoenix area). She has held leadership positions in Product Development, R&D and also participated in the W3C XMLP (SOAP) Working Group. Recently, her technical focus has been HF/UHF RFID Reader technologies and related APIs. In her ea rlier days, Highland Mary earned an MS in Computer Science from Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY.