Safety and Traceability in Patient Healthcare through the Integration of RFID Technology for Intravenous Mixtures in the Prescription-Validation-Elaboration-Dispensation-Administration Circuit to Day Hospital Patients

Abstract

This work presents the integration of the RFID technology with the aim of ensuring the traceability of patients and minimization of adverse events during the process of prescription-validation-elaboration-dispensation-administration of medication by means of the implementation of various passive and active WIFI RFID systems in the Pharmacy and Day Hospital services of the Complejo Hospitalario Universitario A Coruña. Obtaining patient traceability and using the patient/drug binomial during this process allows us to minimize the occurrence of adverse events. The key points in this work are the unmistakably unique identification and accurate real time location of the controlled items (patients and medication). RFID technology has proved to be invaluable in assisting with the everyday clinical practice of a hospital, and has been successfully implemented in this environment and others. In services such as the day hospital, the implementation of said technology is further justified by the high costs of the service and the high risk to the patient.

The Integration of RFID Technology into Business Settings

“…The results described as follows are based on the experience of the authors in integrating RFID technology especially into the health services area [3][4][5][6][7].…”

Tracking and Minimization of Adverse Events in the Patient Care Process while in a Hospital Emergency Service Area

“…The implemented interface which views, in real time, the location of the patient in each of the emergency service areas has an optimum design, into which the data provided by a location motor, which automatically calculates the position of a patient with greater precision by using technologies such as RFID, can be integrated. This avoids costs associated with proprietary license software supplied by hardware manufacturers for the adopted solution [6][7][8][9].…”

“…Owing to our experience in integrating RFID technology to obtain patient and medication traceability [6][7][8][9], we designed a visual interface of the location and medication of a patient while in hospital. This interface had to have the appropriate characteristics in its design to easily integrate with a location motor, for example, a location motor which calculates the whereabouts of a patient and which is controlled by identification technologies such as RFID.…”

Evaluation of a Tracking System for Patients and Mixed Intravenous Medication Based on RFID Technology

“…The objective of this work was the evaluation of the information and alerts system integrated into the prescription-validation-preparation-dispensation-administration of medication for patients process of the CHUAC Day Hospital [13]. The evaluation was carried out by health professionals from the Rheumatology, Pharmacy, Computer and Day Hospital services at CHUAC, involved in the process of daily clinical practice.…”

“…It is important to highlight that this system comprises different RFID systems integrated into the Day Hospital and Pharmacy Service [13]. Each one of these has specific functionalities including facilitating traceability of patients and medicines, precise identification of the patient and the prescribed, validated, prepared and administered medicines, verification that the nursing staff are going to administer the correct medicine in the correct way and under the proper conditions of stability, conservation and transport.…”