RFID Hospital Patient Tracking - System on the Go

With the advent of digital technology in all areas of human endeavor, new technological innovations have been making progress everywhere in the world. One of the best things happened in the healthcare business, and the innovation is the RFID hospital patient tracking Melbourne system.

In a sentence, the technology is all about tracking and locating patients that have wandered away from their rooms or beds and roaming around the hospital facility. It was such a success that the system today is also used to track down hospital personnel as well. It is now applied to emergency patients in transit to the hospital.

Tracking system

The system uses tags embedded in bracelets and pendants worn by patients. The main task is the location of the patients that may have wandered around the hospital facility. Mostly, these patients are unaware of what they’re doing as many of them suffer from some mental disabilities that impair their reasoning capacity. 

The tracking system is also used extensively during emergencies. The main aim is to provide immediate information on the condition of the patient provided by the tags they wore. With sensors that embed their vital signs, the emergency assistance is much faster, more efficient, and in real time.

What it does

During the log in period when the patient is registered into the system, the RFID (radio frequency identification) can disclose the patient’s medical condition, needs, if any, of specific medications and other related vital information.

All these are related in real time to the proper medical authorities to prepare them for the patient’s arrival. Before, there were the outdated barcodes (with very limited capacities) and some man-made labels for some telegraphic codes, this time the tags do all the information disclosure.

The protocols

At the moment, there are three ways the RFID hospital patient tracking Melbourne work. One, a fixed reader interrogates the mobile tags worn by the patient. Two, a mobile reader can interrogate the fixed tags and finally there are mobile readers that can interrogate these mobile tags as well.

These days, a mobile PDA reader for hospital personnel can do a similar scan on the mobile and fixed tags. The doctors use theirs to scan patient information. The nurses used theirs to log medication history and such.

The original system has readers and field generators to interrogate the mobile tags on the patients. The basic aim was to pinpoint their physical location.

Storing of the patient’s vital medical information and other items were later added to the system and made it more efficient because vital information can be had in one go, even if the patient is present or not.

Readers / field generators

The readers of the RFID tags are typically scattered and found in major areas of the medical facility. These might include the main entrances and exits, operating rooms and other key areas. The main work of the reader is receiving information from the tags that it interrogates.

The field generators “wake up” a tag to send its data to readers within range. These usually have motion sensors. The generators have multi-tag read capacity. So far, the RFID hospital patient tracking Melbourne has been successful. More innovations are coming.