Enhancing Medication Safety and Healthcare for Inpatients Using RFID

At least 44,000 people, and perhaps as many as 98,000 people, die in hospitals each year as a result of medical errors. Medical errors could be prevented by building a safer healthcare system. Recently, Radio frequency identification (RFID) has been applied in hospital management. RFID is valuable for quickly retrieving patient information and monitoring patient locations in the hospital. The purpose of this paper is to improve the accuracy of patient identification, and any medications the patient is taking. We proposed a framework using RFID, integration with the Hospital Information Systems (HIS) and reengineer the inpatient medication processes to improve patient safety and reduce serious medical errors. Our framework initially focuses on improving the workflow of patient's medication medicalcare and enhancing the patient safety. The framework will implement in the Taichung Hospital, on January 2007. We intend to construct a system integrating RFID into the existing HIS to improve the efficiency of hospital management and patient safety. The purpose of this is to decrease the risk of serious medical error and therapeutic mistakes thereby increase higher quality of patient care.