The Application of RFID to Healthcare Management of Nursing House

Abstract

The economic development and the changes of social demographic structure have resulted in the problems of population aging sharply and elders' chronic diseases getting serious. Population aging has become a critical problem in modern societies, and senior houses have become a primary option for the life care of elders. However, the regulations related to long-term care are not keeping up with the speed of population aging; also, the lack of caregivers cause the elders not receiving enough care on either outdoor or indoor activities from senior houses. Besides the lack of manpower, an effective healthcare management system is needed to solve the major problem. RFID used to apply on the identification in logistics industry and this technology has become more mature. RFID is now gradually applied to medical business and healthcare for elders. This study intends to replace traditional manual operation with the establishment of RFID positioning monitor and management system in order to reduce manpower as well as continuously transmitting data to the back-end server for real-time monitoring and post enquiry; the data in the database could also become the reference for risk evaluation and healthcare security. Moreover, the system provides not only personal tracker but alerts to secure healthcare so as to reduce chance of accidents happening in nursing homes. The integration of RFID with healthcare operation and information flow is proposed in this study, and the efficient management is also proposed to enhance the management benefits of nursing homes; therefore, this study is focusing on installing the equipment regarding to environment of senior house. The RFID auto positioning monitor system could real-time and continuously monitor and transmit seniors' physiological signals wirelessly through active RFID Reader and active RFID Tag to promote the quality of healthcare. Besides, the active RFID Tag could be embedded in a wristband with RFID electronic label, tied with elders to receive real-time elders' body temperature, location, and conditions for the information system. Caregivers in nursing homes therefore could understand the current situation of elders and monitor the seniors' situations to prevent accidents.