RFID makes blood transfusions safer

By Warwick Ashford for Siemens
Johannesburg, 13 Apr 2006

A clinic in Germany has begun equipping bags of donor blood with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to provide instant information on the blood's location, type, origin and intended recipient.

The tagging of blood bags is an extension of an RFID system implemented by Siemens in 2005 at the Saarbr"ucken Clinic, which was the first hospital in Germany to use RFID tags to identify patients and ensure they received the correct medication.

In 2004, Siemens implemented a similar RFID-based identification, tracking and security solution at the Jacobi Medical Centre in New York.

At Saarbr"ucken and Jacobi, medical workers are able to access the correct patient information at the bedside using mobile computing devices. The system is also used to track patients and newborn infants within the hospital building.

Saarbr"ucken Clinic is now tagging bags of donor blood to reduce to a minimum the risk of giving a patient the wrong blood type. Medical staff must match information on the blood bag tags with the information on patients' RFID armbands with portable RFID readers before using the blood for a transfusion.

Common solution

RFID-enabled systems are becoming increasingly common in the medical and pharmaceutical fields as the technology matures, standards emerge and tag prices drop.

Some of the world's largest pharmaceutical manufacturers regard RFID as a reliable, flexible and cost-effective way of identifying and authenticating drugs to prevent counterfeiting.

Moving beyond the hospital environment, solution builders are now looking at the possibility of developing RFID-enabled emergency bracelets that will enable paramedics to access allergy and other medical information about a patient at the scene of an accident.