Cost Effective Design of an RFID Based Healthcare Service System

Abstract

Healthcare industry confronts many challenges in a pursuit to give safe, cost-effective and highly-valued healthcare services; Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is considered as one of the rising mechanism which helps in addressing the challenges, currently faced by Mobile Healthcare Service System (MHS). This article focuses on the contribution of cost-effective RFID deployments in healthcare sector that broadly categorize tracking of items, patients and items associated to patient; providing solutions for improving the auditability and accountability, reducing human errors, eliminating the risks of misidentification, identifying treatment errors and keeping the inventory updated. It explores certain parameters that can play an important role for the cost effective deployment of an RFID system such as security and privacy concerns, social and ethical aspects. Moreover, the article analyses the main challenges faced and investigates how security threats and vulnerabilities are a red flag to RFID technology. Furthermore, different solutions are highlighted that can streamline the operation and can optimize the workflow services in healthcare system. RFID represents next-generation enhancement over bar-code technology. Based on performance evaluation and comparison, differences between the two technologies are identified. This article also provides an overview that how RFID is a key enabler to build-up the healthcare service system and an efficacious affirm in optimizing and transforming healthcare practices.