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perform sub-optimally. hile compa- nies are stepping up and closing the worflow design gap, many hospitals still lac the confidence that they will meet their end of the bargain in terms of training staff and holding them ac- countable for their roles.”


2. Misinformation. “The internet is an ex- cellent conduit for information, good or bad,” Asher lamented. “Incorrect infor- mation regarding RFID technology, its prerequisites and expected performance has resulted in sub-par deployments in the past. Hospitals are willing to reinvestigate the potential of these tech- nologies, albeit more cautiously, which in turn has slowed rates of adoption.”


3. Limited application of technology. “Health- care providers have developed a nar- rowed field of vision when it comes to the use of RFID technologies,” he noted. “Typically, requirements are related to a specific department and its specific use cases, maing it difficult to justify the cost of implementation. RFID can solve multiple challenges related to resource availability and staff/patient satisfac- tion. hen implemented in a way that helps multiple departments under an enterprise, implementation can save millions of dollars annually. This leap into a broader scope of implementation is slower than expected.”


Phil Sayles, President, Summate Tech- nologies Inc., believes vendor market dynamics as one of the initial barriers, coupled with provider departmental fiefdoms as another.


“Business process improvement tech- nology by definition must have an IT component,” he said. “However, security risks posed by any outside solutions — perceived or real — and stringent privacy regulations have made it very difficult for smaller companies to penetrate the hospital market, and smaller companies almost always drive innovation. Another challenge is that process solutions typically touch multiple departments within hos- pitals, and culturally these departments function largely independent of each other. Introducing holistic process changes is a real battle in this type of environment.”


Usability, usefulness


Continual hurdles — perceived or real — neither have dampened curiosity or doused interest in RFID, nor has it di- minished RFID’s usefulness in the areas of durability, longevity and reliability, experts acknowledge.


“I think the biggest case for RFID’s usefulness is its ability to provide visibil- ity of a product to multiple stakeholders across the supply chain,” Terso’s Pleshek insisted. ere breaing free from only being able to read at a single location. For example, a medical device manufacturer can track a product from the point of man- ufacture, through their distribution center, on to their forward-stocking location, and finally by the healthcare provider at the point of use. This visibility can enable im- proved collaboration between providers and suppliers through integrated software systems, predictive analytics tools and e- commerce platforms that take advantage of the inventory data to make proactive business decisions.”


VUEMED’s Makhanik clearly favors


an RFID functionality that limits, if not minimizes, human interaction, as the wave of the future.


“There are several types of RFID tech- nologies, and they all have the advan- tage of functioning without the need for human-inputted data, but the most versatile is RAIN RFID — a form of passive RFID that uses several industry standards — both for hardware (FCC) and data encoding (GS1),” she recommended. A  has the benefit of not needing a line of sight and of being able to read information from very close to 100 feet away, depending on the hardware and use case scenarios. It’s also excellent at detect- ing movement, which makes continuous tracking possible throughout a facility or a functional process. “RAIN RFID is also highly cost-effec- tive, both in terms of the relatively little hardware needed to achieve visibility in any space, and in terms of the multiple different applications or use cases that it is well suited for, including consumables, equipment and people,” Makhanik contin- ued. “Given its versatility, affordability, and standards-based protocols, RAIN RFID is poised to become a ubiquitous part of any hospital infrastructure as a foundational sensing technology able to deliver the full benefits of nternet of Things].”


Because the construction, energy, manu- facturing, transportation and waste man- agement industries all use both passive and active RFID tags, then why wouldn’t healthcare join that list, STANLEY Health- care’s Geva urges. “Since they were intentionally designed to withstand extreme thermal or humid conditions in rugged environments, and


44 September 2019 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS • hpnonline.com


remain durable without degradation over time, [this] makes them an ideal mecha- nism for various use cases within health- care environments as well,” he said. The healthcare environment includes strict conditions for infection control, clean- ing and sterilization without negatively affecting product shape and form factor, he added.


“The efficiency and effectiveness of RFID technology also makes it particularly attractive for tracking and managing as- sets,” Geva continued. “Unlike alternative tracking technologies [that] require people to manually scan individual items at a close distance, RFID readers can identify and scan hundreds of tagged items si- multaneously per second. Active RFID, mainly used for location-based services, helps improve worflow and efficiency in the hospital by completely automating processes, without the need for manual intervention, which is prone to errors. Finally, the amount of reliable information that can be gathered, stored and shared from an integrated RFID infrastructure of- fers healthcare providers access to critical and accurate real-time data regardless of the use case or application.”


LogiTag’s Lomnitz calls RFID tags a colorful convenience that aligns with the cataloging method and makes it easier for clinicians and supply chain staff alike to scan instead of the numerous bar codes affixed to products and pacages. e see a unified way to maintain uniformity between the hospital and the medical sup- pliers in a manner that is convenient for everyone,” she added.


RFID usefulness can be traced to au- tomation itself, according to CenTrak’s Asher. e rely on automation in almost all aspects of human survival starting with agriculture, manufacturing to service industries like transportation, food, entertainment and healthcare,” he said. Automation has allowed for efficiencies directly tied to the improvement of patient care, in turn helping organizations reduce operational costs straining the overall cost of healthcare in the United States. RFID feeds intelligent software suites that en- able event-based worflows automatically and help users make decisions based on data. This is not possible with the use of manual data entry or the use of bar codes.” HPN


Visit https://hpnonline.com/21092222 for additional commentary.


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