At the beginning of 2020, the new coronavirus began to spread in China with Wuhan as the origin. Now the epidemic has spread all over the world, causing severe damage to the global economy and deepening the anxiety of the entire society. In a special period when the number of quarantine and infection has risen sharply, limited medical resources have become the biggest obstacle to defeating the epidemic. In order to cope with the potential danger of contagion, the demand for masks has risen sharply and has become the largest consumable item for residents.

Although daily protection is important, the real battle against viruses is the medical industry. In the face of a brutal epidemic, fighting for medical time is fighting for life. In this case, improving the efficiency of medical operations becomes particularly critical, which naturally reminds me of RFID smart medical care.

RFID improves medical informatization

As the concept of the Internet of Things gets more and more popular, RFID technology has also penetrated into various industries, including warehouse logistics, supply chain management, clothing, food, medical, animal husbandry, transportation, retail, manufacturing, books, coal mining, payment, etc. Wait. In these very different industries, after the introduction of RFID technology, the operational efficiency of many management links has been significantly improved. RFID has suddenly formed a wave of innovation, and is constantly sweeping away.

RFID smart medical treatment uses advanced Internet of Things technology to realize the interconnection between patients and medical staff, medical institutions, and medical equipment, thereby achieving a higher level of informationization. The use of RFID technology in the medical industry can improve medical procedures and medical quality, and at the same time improve the efficiency and accuracy of medical work, thereby ensuring the safety of patients' lives and reducing the occurrence of medical disputes. With the continuous evolution of related technologies, comprehensive sharing of data will become one of the major development trends in the medical industry, and it will be easier for hospitals to effectively monitor the trend of disease outbreaks.

So, in the face of epidemics such as the new coronavirus, in which medical scenarios can RFID play a role?

RFID for patient identification

When patients are admitted to the hospital, their identity information needs to be registered first. In many cases, the hospital uses manual registration. Once the number of patients is too large, such as a large-scale collective accident, it is difficult to guarantee the efficiency and accuracy of this method. In order to be able to quickly identify all patients, complete admission registration and carry out emergency work, the medical department urgently needs a set of automatic identification systems that can provide the identity and condition information of the wounded in real time, and this system can be realized by RFID technology.

Wear a wristband tag for each patient. When receiving a patient's diagnosis and treatment, the medical staff only needs to scan the tag information with a handheld reader (PDA), and they will know the first aid items that need to be performed, such as whether an infusion or injection is needed. Product name, specifications, completed treatment items, whether there will be adverse reactions and so on. All the data is displayed in real time in front of the medical staff, so that they can check the information about the medical procedures and drug specifications and quantities.

RFID for hospital contact history tracking control

Combining the infectious disease epidemic tracking and control system with the hospital contact history RFID tracking and control system, epidemic prevention and government units can accurately grasp the dynamic information of the entire processing process in real time, thereby preventing similar infection control problems in hospitals such as atypical pneumonia and new corona The generation.

For infectious waste generated from home isolation and medical hospitals, you can use the global positioning system to track and control the dedicated garbage trucks. The relevant units can immediately grasp the whereabouts of the garbage trucks and take immediate actions when abnormalities occur to prevent the virus from further outward. diffusion. All in all, the tracking control through RFID technology has a significant effect in controlling the spread of epidemic infection.

RFID for tracking and positioning of medical supplies

Large medical centers generally have a large number of important medical asset and medical article storage bases, and logisticians need to find the required items from thousands of items every day according to orders. Because the outer packaging of these medical items are highly similar, but their uses are very different, the hospital logistics department often spends huge manpower and material resources to find and verify these items. In addition, during the adjustment or removal of the warehouse, misplacement of medical items is likely to occur, resulting in large-scale damage to the items or drug accidents after circulation to the market. Therefore, the use of RFID technology in the tracking of medical supplies is also very necessary.

There are many types of label packaging for medical supplies, most of which are strip labels that are attached to the packaging of medical devices or articles. Material labels will vary according to different uses. General medical devices only need to be bound with ordinary labels, and they are only used for identification. Some assets that often need to be repeatedly searched and located need to be bound with LED lights and flashing tags to provide visual assistance for finding specific assets.

RFID for pharmaceutical supply chain management

In the medical field, a large number of errors in prescriptions, drug delivery, and medications occur every year, resulting in some medical accidents. According to statistics, economic losses in these areas are as high as 75 billion US dollars each year. In addition, counterfeit and inferior drugs account for about 10% of the global pharmaceutical market. After the electronic label is used to identify the drug, every step from the factory to the sale can be tracked in real time. Improved drug tracking can help hospitals save money and curb the proliferation of counterfeit and inferior drugs.

In early March this year, Japan Post stated that in order to curb the effects of the proliferation of counterfeit drugs, it would invest about 100 billion yen (equivalent to RMB 6.5 billion) to introduce blockchain and RFID technology for drug transportation. Japan Post will affix RFID electronic tags to medicines, install sensors that can read ambient temperature and location information in containers, and install special equipment for RFID and sensor information in factories, pharmaceutical companies, warehouses, and transportation vehicles.

RFID brings better medical services

At present, the application scenarios of RFID in the medical field have been very rich, of which, the proportion of drug identification is the highest. After summing up long-term practical experience, a consensus of "three readings and five pairs" has been formed in the hospital's drug control. The third reading refers to the need to change the storage location of medicines in medicine boxes, medicine bags, and cups The second confirmation, the five pairs is a comparison of 5 items of data including patient, time, drug name, dose, route, etc. In the implementation of the "three readings and five pairs" process, RFID technology can be used to improve efficiency and accuracy.

With the development of technology and the introduction of new solutions, the RFID scene in the medical industry is much more than that. In recent years, driven by national policies and technologies, the demand for smart medical market in China has been growing, and the market size has been expanding rapidly. With the increasing popularity of RFID in the medical industry, people are also enjoying more efficient, smarter, and more reliable medical services.