Abstract
Mainstream healthcare has been facing numerous challenges, and it is expected to see that these challenges become more severe and frequent when healthcare is dealing with disasters. This points to the necessity of utilising technologies to support healthcare and disaster managers in making quality decisions during chaotic and rapidly changing conditions in disaster situations. Therefore, in this research, the objective is to identify the role of RFID technology in healthcare-related activities before, during, and after disasters in terms of application areas and phases of the disaster management cycle (DMC). A Delphi approach was used in this research. Two rounds of questionnaires were administered to a panel of experts to evaluate the actual and potential use of RFID applications for healthcare within DMC. The Delphi participants were the field experts in the areas of disaster management, disaster medicine, and information systems. Based on the Delphi results, RFID applications were seen to be most useful in the response and recovery phases of disasters. RFID was seen as being most helpful for health-related supply management and casualty information. There were concerns that privacy and security may be barriers to adoption and use. Other applications identified by this study include identifying and tracking medical resources (including clinicians and first responders) and their accurate coordination in the response missions, determining idle resources, and maximising their utilisation during response activities. In this research, 35 potential scenarios of RFID applications for healthcare purposes within DMC and Disaster e-Health (DEH) were evaluated with the Delphi participants. RFID technologies could play an important role in DMC and DEH to provide more reliable and timely information to support healthcare during disasters. Based on the research results, managing the supply chain emerged as a major RFID application for supporting disaster healthcare.
Highlights
Disasters are an inseparable part of human life and have always afflicted civilisations.Even with the advent of new technologies, natural hazards are still causing environmental destruction, human suffering, and social and economic disruption
This paper focuses on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and aims to identify its potential applications for Disaster e-Health (DEH) and disaster management cycle (DMC)
Adopting RFID within DMC was inspired by its current usage for normal and emergency care
Summary
Disasters are an inseparable part of human life and have always afflicted civilisations. Even with the advent of new technologies, natural hazards are still causing environmental destruction, human suffering, and social and economic disruption. The source of disasters can be natural, man-made, or infectious diseases. Regardless of the source, disasters impose huge pressure on medical and public health services. Health systems deal routinely with emergencies, disasters can be defined as events that surpass the normal capacity of systems and societies. Many decisions must be taken under uncertain conditions, all of which impose additional challenges and increase errors and mistakes and reduce efficiency. Healthcare has been incapable of responding properly to major disasters [1], and it is evident from the COVID-19 pandemic that healthcare systems are rarely disaster-ready
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