Mobile Identification: NFC in the Healthcare Sector

In the midterm future Near Field Communications (NFC) is expected to spread up within the healthcare sector. This article reviews the use of NFC in the healthcare sector. Application areas, use cases, potential benefits and barriers, will be presented. The present study provides guidance for researchers in adopting and deploying NFC in medical sector. The main healthcare and security applications are patient's identification and medication control. NFC can also be used in deploying resource control, management and data acquisition and remote delivery applications. The main benefits of NFC are: improvement of care quality, existence of standards and applications with friendly human interface. The main barriers are: limited availability of mobile phones with NFC, deployment costs, security, technology limitations and support of the health centre staff.