CIO this week looked at how using radio frequency identification technology to track medical equipment in real-time has reduced costs and improved care at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
The hospital in 2004 began tagging pacers and telemetry transmitters with Radianse's RFID chips. The tag sends a signal to a receiver that links to the hospital's IS network. Physicians and nurses use a Web-based application to log on and determine where equipment is located.
"When these devices are misplaced there's a delay in care," said Micahel Fraai, the hospital's director of biomedical engineering. Since implementing the system, Fraai said the hospital has "substantially" reduced inventory shrinkage and saved money. The hospital has reduced losses of certain cardiac equipment by more than half, CIO reports.
A recent study by the Spyglass Consulting Group found that 10% of the 100 health care organizations surveyed use RFID to track equipment, and more than half said they would implement RFID technology this year (Patton, CIO, 1/15).