J Korean Soc Med Inform.  2008 Sep;14(3):257-266.

The development and application of active RFID entrance management system for emergency patient safety

• Cha MI
• Oh BJ
• Yeo WH
• Min SW
• Lee SW
• Kim W
• Lim KS
• Lee JH

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
Unauthorized exit of emergency patients could cause serious safety problems in the emergency room. If the entry and exit of emergency patients can be monitored by RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology, such safety issues may be resolved. METHOD: We determined the fundamental requirements of the system for emergency patient safety, and chose an active RFID tag to conduct the recognition test. Subsequently, we performed the entrance recognition rate test and safety test using pacemakers. After developing the entrance management programs, we implemented the system in the emergency room and collected data for 6 months. RESULT: The overall success rate of the entrance recognition test was 99.5%, and during the safety test, pacemaker oversensing due to noise did not occur. We intended to fulfill the fundamental requirements in developing entrance management programs. A total of 508 patients were given RFID tags for the study period, and the recognition failure rate was 4.7%. "Alert" pop-ups occurred 62 times.
CONCLUSION
An active RFID entrance management system would be very useful for safety management in emergency room because the system enables detection of the unauthorized exit of emergency patients in real. time.

Keyword

Emergencies; Patient identification systems; RFID; Safety; Computerized Medical Record

MeSH Terms

Emergencies
Humans
Medical Records Systems, Computerized
Noise
Patient Identification Systems
Patient Safety
Radio Frequency Identification Device
Safety Management