Active-RFID System Accuracy and Its Implications for Clinical Applications

Radio frequency identification (RFlD) is a technology for automatically tracking the location of persons and objects tagged with a small radio transceiver. Its use in retail and security applications has received widespread attention in the popular press, RFID's application in hospital business processes is increasing rapidly, and a number of safety-critical clinical applications have been prototyped. In order to determine RFID 's fitness for use in safety-critical as well as more mundane perioperative processes, the operating room of the future project at the University of Maryland Medical Center evaluated six active-RFID systems. The evaluation consisted of hands-on testing of a variety of COTS systems employing the leading active-RFID technologies-802.11 RF, proprietary RF, ultra-wideband, infrared and ultrasound. In this paper we report the results of those tests and discuss their implications for the application of active-RFID technology to clinical applications