Textile-Based Incognito RFID for Patient Tracking

The advancement of wireless technologies enabled the use of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags at an increasing rate in the past decade. In retail, RFIDs are placed in tags on merchandise for analysis of supply chain, inventory, and loss prevention (K. Finkenzeller, RFID Handbook: Fundamentals and Applications in Contactless Smart Cards, Radio Frequency Identification and Near-Field Communication, 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010.). However, in healthcare applications, RFIDs are not only used for item tracking but can also be utilized for patient tracking. When treating patients with memory impairment, RFID placement must be done in a noninvasive and unobtrusive way so as to not frighten the patient with the applied technology (R. Nayak, A. Singh, R. Padhye and L. Wang, “RFID in textile and clothing manufacturing: technology and challenges”, Fashion and Textiles, vol. 2, no. 9, June 2015.),(J. Lundquist et al., “Textile-Based Inkjet-Printed RFIDs: Exploring wearable antennas in the real world [Bioelectromagnetics]”, in IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 50–62, Feb. 2024.).