NEW TECHNOLOGY
How RFID addresses cybersecurity
Healthcare Supply Chain departments strive to stay ahead of cybersecurity threats to computer systems and electronic medical devices that may invite adventurous and creative hackers to pry through firewalls and play around, without respect for patient care procedures and records. So how can an organization protect itself from radiofrequency identification (RFID) coding that has been altered or tampered with maliciously?
“Security in any of todays ITbased solutions
is of great importance. The technology of RI continues to look for ways to encrypt data ensure the data within the tag or data within the database are incredibly secure. ut those efforts are going to be ongoing and we would encourage any healthcare provider to ask that eact uestion: How is my data being protected That would be our advice to continue to ask that uestion.”
Joe Pleshek, President and CEO, Terso Solutions
“Its critical that any organiation providing RIbased applications uses the appropriate protocols and standards for locking the data that is encoded onto the RI tag so that the data on the tag cannot be tampered with. This is an indispensable condition for establishing a chain of custody that can be trusted. It also provides a defense against counterfeits and shrinkage.” Lana Makhanik, COO, VUEMED
“Many passive RI tag manufacturers now of fer products that disable the tag if its tampered with or removed. ther manufacturers have developed anticounterfeiting tags which break or tear the tag if they are removed. In addition to these measures solution manufacturers take etra steps to integrate cybersecurity protection into their endtoend integrated hardware and software platform. ur solutions incorporate encrypted messaging to protect sensitive data and we have recently enabled various mecha nisms in our platform including latest ii authentication protocols and certicates in both software and hardware to ensure the secure delivery of data.” Sagi Geva, Director, Hospital Solutions, STANLEY Healthcare
“rganiations may protect themselves from faulty devices with a software lock that disables overwriting of RI code on the tag. In the event of an incident the software will then alert the appropriate individuals immediately to uaran tine the issue.” Kapil Asher, Director of Sales, Asset Track- ing/Management, CenTrak Inc.
PRODUCTS & SERVICES
RFID: What’s the frequency, healthcare?
by Rick Dana Barlow
ince radiofrequency identifica- tion (RFID) technology emerged in healthcare operations about 15 years ago as an option for providers to track people, products and equipment, the response has been mixed.
S Amid the cornucopia of educational
sessions and media reviews and stories, awareness of and interest in RFID really isn’t the issue. All of it continues to outpace acceptance, adoption and implementation. Granted, healthcare providers have had to deal with competing priorities over the years that have occupied copi- ous amounts of bandwidth, manpower and time, ranging from electronic health records to ICD-10 code conversions for reimbursement. In supply chain, so long as the item master remained accurate and active, and somehow linked to the charge data master, and those two fed into billing and accounts payable, they could afford to procrastinate.
However, as supply chain expenses, coupled with purchased services expenses, are poised to surpass labor as the largest expense category in a healthcare facility, these facilities may not be able to put off the potential efficiencies that can contribute to their balance sheet. So what is it about RFID that piques curiosity and interest but also causes hesitation as a next-generation people and product tracker?
Healthcare Purchasing News tapped into the expertise of a half-dozen RFID thought leaders o draw out their insights around RFID’s durability, longevity and reliabil- ity for healthcare provider supply chains overlaid with its popularity and percep- tion of costliness.
Available resources, noted priorities RFID may be highly regarded for detecting counterfeit and fraudulent products, and tracking and tracing products with a bit less effort than bar coding that requires line-of-sight for scanning, but those at-
42 September 2019 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS •
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tributes, by and large, haven’t accelerated adoption and implementation. Lana Makhanik, COO, VUEMED, points to five factors that have slowed momentum and progress among health- care providers. The first involves invest- ment in new technology against the backdrop of limited resources after “massive investments in
Lana Makhanik
[electronic medical record] implementa- tions and industry mergers/consolida- tions, which have required major IT integration efforts across many IT sys- tems,” Makhanik observed.
The second factor closely relates to
the first, and that is priorities Various functions within hospitals — IT, clinical, supply chain, biomed engineering (for euipment, finance, etc. each have their own individual priorities that compete with supply chain for attention, and clini- cal projects typically get prioritized over operational ones, given hospitals’ limited resources,” she continued.
Even so, once a provider establishes pri-
orities for investment, the third factor adds another speedbump to the path. “Budgeting approval processes are
lengthy, complex and contentious, even while many organizations recognize the substantial ROI that can be achieved in making an investment in operational ef- ficiencies with , Mahani noted. Yet, at the same time, communication
can complicate matters as indicated by the fourth factor. “Hospital administrators don’t have a clear understanding of the magnitude of savings, efficiency gains and safety improvements that the implementation of RAIN RFID technology can bring to their supply chain as well as their clinical areas,” she said. (Editor’s Note: RAIN RFID is a global alliance promoting universal adop- tion of UHF RFID. For more information, visit
https://rainrfid.org).
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