Healthcare services are complex and life-critical. One mistake in any procedure may lead to irremediable consequences; numerous researchers, thus, introduce information and communication technology to improve quality of services and enhance patient safety by reducing the medical errors. Radio frequency identification (RFID) is considered as one of the emerging tool assist in meeting the challenges of the present situation. In recent years, RFID has been applied in medical organizations for the purpose of managing and tracking medical equipment, monitoring and identifying patients, ensuring that the right medication is given to the right patient, and preventing the use of counterfeit medicine. However, most of the existing literature focuses on demonstrating how RFID can benefit the healthcare industry, whereas little attention has been given to the management issues involved in constructing an RFID project in medical organizations. In this paper, an exploratory case study is conducted in a medical organization to illustrate the development framework and critical issues that should be taken into consideration in the preparation, implementation and maintenance stage of constructing such a project. All the experiences and results discussed in this paper offer valuable and useful insights to steer those who would like to start their journey using RFID in medical organizations.

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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to focus on the design of a counterfeit network analyzer (CNA) for aggregating all the problematic product flows in order to discover any counterfeit distribution source, and to control the spread of counterfeit goods. The analyzer leverages radio frequency identification (RFID) information stored within the electronic product code (EPC) network. Design/methodology/approach -The system architecture of the proposed CNA is first discussed. A case study of the system application in a Hong Kong pharmaceutical manufacturing company then presents the adoption process and the challenges encountered in such technologies. Findings -Compared with traditional approaches, the results show that the proposed RFID solution is reliable and is capable of discovering counterfeit distributions, as well as reducing the detection costs by means of higher product movement visibility within the supply chain. Practical implications -A prototype system has been constructed and trial implemented in a pharmaceutical manufacturing company. It proved to be of benefit to the manufacturer who is able to deter product counterfeiting effectively and visualize real-time supply chain data automatically. Originality/value -The proposed CNA is designed to overcome issues of information invisibility, which is considered a huge cost lost in the identification of counterfeit products, loss of sales and reputation associated with the counterfeiting, and ineffective product authentication in the manufacturing industry. This paper contributes to the RFID research in the counterfeiting area by studying the feasibility and practicality of shifting the focus of product identification from the traditional package redesign solutions to the visualization of the movement of the product (i.e. product supply chain) via the use of RFID and EPC. Furthermore, a pharmaceutical manufacturing site provided a case study for discussing the advantages, critical issues for implementation of the RFID system, and lessons learned.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) is the technology that put an RFID tag on objects or people, so that they can be identified, tracked, and managed automatically. With its wide application in the automobile assembly industry, warehouse management and the supply chain network, RFID has been recognized as the next promising technology in serving the positioning purpose. Existing positioning technologies such as GPS are not available indoors as the terminal cannot get the signal from satellites. To enhance the availability of the positioning systems for indoors, the development of RFID positioning system for locating objects or people have became a hot topic in recent research. Compared with conventional active and high-cost solutions, this paper studied the feasibility of using passive RFID tags for indoor positioning and object location detection to provide real time information for tracking movement. Results of experiment show that readability of the passive RFID positioning system is satisfactory, and it is a more cost effective solution when compared with other positioning technologies.

There are an increasing number of organizations planning to implement Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems to enhance their competitiveness. Due to the novelty of the technology, many managerial challenges exist in determining and planning for the implementation of such systems. These challenges often lead to wasted efforts and resources, as well as to failed implementations. This paper presents a systematic and holistic RFID implementation framework which has been validated by both users and experts. The framework outlines the important tasks to be performed in each step of the implementation process. To enable practitioners to make informed go/no‐go decisions, essential considerations of implementation are also discussed in this paper. Furthermore, the critical success factors for the deployment of such systems are also elaborated