An Automated Drug Delivery Tracking Device Utilizing RFID Technology

Abstract

Medication errors are one of the most common types of medical errors involving a substantial number of individuals and accounting for a sizable increase in healthcare costs (Institute of Medicine, 2000, To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System, National Academies, Washington, DC). These errors are also potentially injurious or fatal (2008, “National Study on the Frequency, Types, Causes and Consequences of Voluntarily Reported Emergency Department Medication Errors,” J. Emerg. Med., in press). Currently, particularly in time critical tasks, such as during the treatment of a cardiac arrest, drugs may not be properly documented. This leads to an increased likelihood of subsequent medication errors with the patient. In order to efficiently and accurately record the time a drug is delivered, a device is needed that (1) records information with little or no intervention by the healthcare professional, so that they are free to focus on their primary task (of particular relevance in time critical tasks), (2) provides a precise time mark, and (3) is reliable for proper documentation. The prototype device proposed here for marking the time of drug delivery involves the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology. Each drug dose (i.e., the typically used preloaded syringes or packages) is labeled by a RFID tag mounted on it in terms of the type of drug and its dosage. Both the drug and the tag are enclosed in a radio frequency shielded sleeve to prevent the tag from being read prematurely by the time marking system. The time marking system itself consists of a RFID reader and a software or hardware based internal clock. When a drug is administered to a patient, the sleeve is opened, the drug is removed, and the RFID tag transmits encoded information to the reader, which then records the time of an internal clock. This setup results in the proposed time marking system providing a hands-free documentation of the time at which a specific drug is administered. The device requires little or no training on its use, is fast and efficient, can be easily integrated with current medical technology, and can be adapted to the various constraints of a healthcare setting. Requiring no time from healthcare professionals to mark the time of drug administration, the proposed time marking system will help alleviate error in documenting drug delivery.

A computer architecture based on disruptive information technologies for drug management in hospitals

“…The third novelty of this proposal regarding the state of the art is the comparative study of the different solutions for labelling and reading data on drug packages (IoT, RFID UHF, RFID NFC and barcodes/QR), considering economic as well as operational and environmental aspects. The results improve the state of the art since existing studies do not compare the four possibilities together ( Liu et al, 2022 ; Ruan et al, 2018 ; Camacho-Cogollo, Bone & Iadanza, 2020 ; Lee et al, 2019 ; Haddara & Staaby, 2018 ; Ebrahimzadeh et al, 2021 ; Vagaš et al, 2019 ; Ko & Woo, 2018 ; Zhang, Fu & Li, 2019 ; Buthelez et al, 2022 ; Cocian, Morales & Schneider, 2023 ; Petro et al, 2009 ; Iadanza, 2012 ; Wu, Kuo & Liu, 2005 ; Bevilacqua et al, 2013 ). In contrast, this study has analysed the four technologies and has shown the advantages and disadvantages of Barcode/QR, RFID and IoT for drug management in hospitals.…”

“…Indeed, an IoT device could be more expensive than the drug itself. On the other hand, UHF RFID labelling is very useful due the speed at which sets of tags can be read compared to current drug barcode scanning ( Petro et al, 2009 ; Iadanza, 2012 ; Wu, Kuo & Liu, 2005 ; Bevilacqua et al, 2013 ), but readers are expensive. Finally, barcodes and QR codes are easy and cheap to generate, but their reading requires direct optical focus, which can be a serious practical drawback.…”

Deployment of Smart Specimen Transport System Using RFID and NB-IoT Technologies for Hospital Laboratory

“…A demonstration of RFID application in Tokyo Medical and Dental University [ 24 ] has successfully used both active and passive RFID tags to track the clinical intervention and blood tests of the patients together with the wireless communication system. RFID tags have also been implemented for the laboratory specimen management to replace the barcode system [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. For example, the RFID systems in [ 14 , 15 ] were proposed to manage and authenticate blood samples in hospital clinical laboratories.…”

“…In addition, RFID and IoT are vital to boost the hospital’s digital transformation to improve the efficiency and safety through many applications, such as tracking patients inside the hospital, drug management, and medical assets in hospitals. Despite the rising RFID and IoT applications in medicine, there is a limited medical specimen management and logistic domain approach for hospitals [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 ]. In fact, medical specimen tube management is one of the critical activities in hospitals with extreme accuracy and reliability in the labeling, delivery, and recording processes.…”