Real-Time Person Identification in a Hospital Setting: A Systematic Review.

Heleen M Essink,M Frank Termaat,Nino L Wouters,Armelle Knops,Amber M.A Liqui Lung,C Nienke Van Der Meulen,Aart J Van Der Molen,Wouter J.H Veldkamp

doi:10.3390/s20143937

Abstract

In the critical setting of a trauma team activation, team composition is crucial information that should be accessible at a glance. This calls for a technological solution, which are widely available, that allows access to the whereabouts of personnel. This diversity presents decision makers and users with many choices and considerations. The aim of this review is to give a comprehensive overview of available real-time person identification techniques and their respective characteristics. A systematic literature review was performed to create an overview of identification techniques that have been tested in medical settings or already have been implemented in clinical practice. These techniques have been investigated on a total of seven characteristics: costs, usability, accuracy, response time, hygiene, privacy, and user safety. The search was performed on 11 May 2020 in PubMed and the Web of Science Core Collection. PubMed and Web of Science yielded a total n = 265 and n = 228 records, respectively. The review process resulted in n = 23 included records. A total of seven techniques were identified: (a) active and (b) passive Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) based systems, (c) fingerprint, (d) iris, and (e) facial identification systems and infrared (IR) (f) and ultrasound (US) (g) based systems. Active RFID was largely documented in the included literature. Only a few could be found about the passive systems. Biometric (c, d, and e) technologies were described in a variety of applications. IR and US techniques appeared to be a niche, as they were only spoken of in few (n = 3) studies.

Highlights

Acute trauma care for severely injured patients is performed by a multi-disciplinary team of in-hospital specialists
The first and most common technique was active Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags (n = 13) (Table 2); RFID covers a large portion of the electromagnetic frequency spectrum (120 MHz up to 10 GHz)
A variety of real-time person identification techniques in healthcare setting were found in the included studies

Summary

Introduction

Acute trauma care for severely injured patients is performed by a multi-disciplinary team of in-hospital specialists. The team takes care of every major trauma patient presented to a trauma center. 24/7 and is activated within minutes after announcement. A trauma team activation is a critical time-sensitive procedure where communication is vital [1,2,3]. Knowledge of the team composition is the basis for good communication within a team [6]. This is a challenge during acute trauma care, since the team composition differs daily and consists of a variety of disciplines [1,3].

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Discussion

Conclusion