The Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in Brno, Moravia, is working with the Czech Republic branch of IBM on a pilot project to use radio frequency identification technology to track chemotherapy drugs, the Prague Post reports.
Cancer drugs, IV bags and pharmacists now are tagged with the RFID chips to ensure that the correct patients are administered the appropriate drugs and dosages, as well as to track expensive drugs within the hospital. The RFID tags also help track the medicine while it is in an isolator, which is used to reduce the pharmacists' exposure to the drugs.
The project, which began in 2006 and will run through 2009, is in a monitoring phase to gather as much data as possible about the flow of drugs throughout the hospital, Matìj Adam, IBM's health care industry leader for Eastern and Central Europe, said.
"The next stage is scheduled for the end of this year," Adam said, adding, "Then the people preparing the infusions will be guided and self-corrected during the process, using the existing information."
Pavel Andres, the hospital's associate director for preventive health care, said, "We plan to expand RFID usage in a number of areas -- mainly identification of personnel, patients, assets and other logistic support processes" (Voosen, Prague Post, 7/25).