Health Transformation

The benefits of RFID could more easily be achieved when international standards bodies would address the issues of electromagmetic interference (EMI) in medical equipment on a global scale in close cooperation with the IT industry. Also, the allocation of specific frequencies within a hospital setting should be regulated. One particularly surprising interference was caused by the fact that a modern remote pacemaker programmer operated in the same (unregulated) frequency band as the RFID technology applied. Updated standards and regulated frequencies would take away the (costly) need to carry out tests with RFID and medical equipment in every possible combination in each single instance of its application in a clinical setting. It could also take away the fear, obvious from the newspaper articles, to innovate clinical care using this technology.

The national press picked up on this subject from a press-release issued by the applied research institute TNO and the Amsterdam Medical Centre (AMC) who carried out the research as part of a large scale project on the application of RFID technology in healthcare. This project was carried out at the request of the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, and was partly financed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs as coordinator of the Statewide IT Agenda. In addition, funds and resources have been provided by the consortium partners AMC, Capgemini, Geodan, Intel and Oracle. A full report on this project is featured on www.health-rfid.com