Medecine tracking and patient management

Identification technologies for healthcare

Precise management of drugs and the patient

Healthcare and the medical sector are fields in which RFID and BLE technologies can bring great improvements both in terms of service use and in management efficiency and reduction of errors and costs. The technology be applied on various aspects of the healthcare world: unique identification of drugs and management of the pharmacy, real-time traceability of assets and objects, identification, location and management of patients.

What aspect of healthcare would you like to improve with RFID and BLE?

Inventory and medecine tracking

RFID technology is a valid solution to the problem of managing drugs in hospital and nursing home environments. In fact, nowadays most drug flows are managed manually: clearly this can lead to thefts and losses, as well as errors.

Applying RFID labels onto drugs and pharmacy products allow to complete automate the stocking and warehouse management, knowing the inventory both of the ward and the central pharmacy in real-time.

The automated and precise management of drugs with our EasySAFE smart lockers allow to control and manage ward stockings, strongly reducing manual checks of stock and expiration date.

Medical asset tracking

In healthcare, a large number of different items pass through rooms and wards. Whatever the asset, this large quantity of data must be managed to know exactly the inventory status and avoid useless restocking, other than wasting time in long manual controls. Asset flow, together with warehouse and pharmacy management, can be managed with gates and mobile devices like tablets and handhelds.

A peculiar type of asset to track is that of reusable surgical instruments: they must always be available at the operating rooms, after being properly sanitized. Associating the instruments to RFID tools, both their sterilization and presence can be guaranteed.

Patient management

Patient safety must be guaranteed while their presence in the healthcare service. EasyRFID offers complete solutions for patient management, such as EasyCARE, which is based on BLE technology in sanitizable and reusable bracelets.

Thanks to this system, it is possible to locate patients, limiting the “wanderers” – frail patients who move away from their station on their own – and speeding up the search for the patient if the structure is very large. The bracelets also allow to collect emergency signals sent by the user and detect if there is a fall, as in the case of illness.

Patient management can be expanded with the integration of RFID or BLE with the EHR – Electronic Medical Record. The code associated to the BLE bracelet is unique and unequivocally identifies the patient, for rapid viewing of clinical data and a quick connection to the hospital pharmacy, reducing the risks that may arise from homonyms, partial or incorrect information.

Access control

To ensure greater security of the service, it is possible to limit the access of personnel to certain areas of the structure. By integrating an access control system, a badge with an RFID tag will be necessary to access environments, patient rooms, medicines or medical equipment.

When tracking disposable items is needed, some hospitals prefer to track the staff member who used the items to ensure that the inventory is being used correctly and to reduce waste or theft. This is one case where the staff tracking system can be used in conjunction with inventory tracking.