Research Lands Author in the Midst of RFID Controversy and on the Award Stand

Abstract

When Barbara Christe and her colleagues at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis (IUPUI) were approached by a company seeking help in adapting their radio frequency identification (RFID) technology to a clinical application, their first step was to research what studies had already been performed on the issue. They found only one study analyzing the effect of RFID systems on medical equipment, and confirmed with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) representatives that no additional studies were known to them. They decided to undertake a study of their own, and launched themselves into the middle of a controversy over the safety of these applications in the healthcare environment.The only published study on RFID had appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in June 2008. That study concluded that RFID could induce potentially hazardous incidents in medical devices, and generated newspaper headlines like “RFID Could Kill You” and “Patients ‘Put at Risk’ by Tracking Devices.” Such headlines caused alarm to sweep through the medical community.Christe's findings in her BI&T paper, “Testing Potential Interference with RFID Usage in the Patient Care Environment,” responded to that alarm. “We found that the JAMA study was not using realistic scenarios to generate incidents of interference,” says Christe. She was called on to explain the study results repeatedly, and spoke to numerous reporters to share her findings that the RFID technology was safe “when antennas are placed in appropriate locations for these use scenarios.”“Our study brings a level of credibility to the application of RFID to healthcare,” says Christe.The study also earned her the 2008 Outstanding Management & Technology Paper award from AAMI, which will be presented at this year's Annual Conference, June 6–8 in Baltimore, MD. “It is good to be recognized for something so important,” Christe says. “There is very little academic research in the engineering arena on the application of technology in healthcare, in part because the human body is outside the comfort zone of most engineers. More scientific research is needed focusing on clinical applications.”