|
Any new technology goes through a period of uncertainty as decision-makers dip their toes into the pool. There has to be a measure of guaranteed benefit before a major organization such as a hospital can jump into the water and fully accept the latest innovation. It looks like the RFID pool is going to get a little bigger.
Radiofrequency identification (RFID) health care investments by larger health care organizations are experiencing explosive growth, according to Spyglass Consulting Group, a market intelligence firm and consultancy that announced results of a comprehensive RFID end-user market study. The adoption and investment in RFID solutions primarily to track high-value mobile assets, patients and staff members represents a 204 percent increase from a Spyglass 2005 RFID study.
"RFID investments are growing exponentially as health care organizations develop a better understanding of the technology and how it can be used to solve real problems within their facility," says Gregg Malkary, managing director of Spyglass Consulting Group. "RFID solutions are being deployed to enhance patient safety, increase operational efficiency and optimize business workflow processes. Larger organizations are more likely to make RFID investments than smaller hospitals because they have a larger physical footprint making it more difficult to track things."
Hospitals have yet to make RFID an enterprise-wide solution, but the technology's success on a department-by-department basis suggests that day will come soon. Malkary says larger health care providers have expanded the scopes of trials and demonstrations and are learning more about incorporating RFID on a grander scale.
"Just three years ago, the technology was immature," Malkary says. "But over the past few years there have been so many success stories. Hospitals have also learned that RFID can be used to track other assets besides medical devices, such as staff and patients. For example, it makes sense to invest in an infant protection systems that [puts] a small RFID tag on the baby's calf."
The study, "Trends in RFID 2008," presents the findings of an end-user market study focused on the current state of RFID adoption by larger health care organizations across the U.S. The report uncovers opinions regarding the market opportunities and challenges for deploying RFID solutions for accurate mobile asset and patient tracking, positive patient identification and supply chain inventory management.
The content for the study derived from 100 in-depth interviews with health care professionals working in pharmacy, clinical engineering, materials management, laboratory and medical/nursing informatics. The telephone interviews were conducted over a three-month period starting in March. The purpose of the interviews was to identify the critical needs and requirements for RFID through discussions about existing workflow inefficiencies, wireless and RFID solution usage and the potential impact for deploying RFID in the future.
Department heads and business-line managers are making investments in RFID to solve specific business problems, the study concluded. However, hospital administrators may be reluctant to embrace RFID solutions for enterprise-wide deployment until the clinical, financial and operational efficacy of those solutions can be demonstrated to provide value for the entire organization.
RFID solutions for tracking high-value mobile assets, patients and medical staff provides health care organizations with a compelling value proposition to increase operational efficiency, optimize patient flow interactions and streamline workflow processes, the study report stated. These solutions automate manual paper-based workflow processes where few alternative IT solutions exist.
"Hospitals can use locationing to track the asset across the clinical pathway," Malkary says. "They can then go back and see where the downtimes are and figure out how to tighten the process and even automate certain aspects. It keeps things from falling through the cracks."
Passive RFID solutions are emerging for niche applications within specific hospital departments for inventory management, patient identification and quality assurance applications, the report noted.
Jim Boyle is on staff at ADVANCE.
|