Speaker:

Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal LLC

This session, designed for all seminar attendees looking to understand the various types of RFID technologies—as well as applications for each—will cover active, battery-assisted and passive technologies (high-frequency and ultrahigh-frequency), and explain how each can be deployed to track various assets. The session will also offer a brief overview of EPCglobal's standards, including their relevance in health care.

Speaker:

Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal LLC

UMass Memorial Medical Center is employing radio frequency identification to control the costs of high-value implantable medical supplies, improve patient safety and adhere to regulatory compliance.
Located in Worcester, Mass., UMass Memorial is one of the largest acute-care hospitals in the U.S. Northeast. Its renowned Cardiac Cath Lab has an inventory valuation of more than $2 million to support the more than 7,000 procedures its doctors perform annually. Prior to the RFID deployment, it was a monumental task for the facility to control costs, ensure the proper products were available and manage expiration dates. Learn how UMass has put RFID to work to reduce inventory costs by $300,000, manage bulk-buy opportunities, reduce expiring products and optimize product mix to support physician preferences, while also improving clinical staff workflow.

Speaker:

Kim Carter, Director, Cardiovascular Diagnostics and Interventional Services , UMass Medical Center

On any given day, the ambulatory care center at the Lahey Clinic Medical Center, in Burlington, Mass., treats approximately 3,000 patients, while hundreds more receive top-quality care in the 295-bed hospital, 24-hour emergency department and trauma center. The center, one of the top medical facilities in the Boston area, has more than 1,500 pieces of moveable medical equipment. In this session, hear how Lahey pioneered the use of RFID for asset tracking in a hospital, and how it has since moved on to additional applications of the technology.

Speaker:

Ed Bortone, Director of Materials Services and Security, Lahey Clinic Medical Center

Takeaway:

• Learn how the Lahey Clinic uses RFID for employee parking, external and internal doorway access control, payroll deduction for its cafeteria and scrub-suit acquisition
• How one employee RFID badge is being used for all RFID applications

Much has been said regarding the effectiveness of real-time location systems (RTLS) in meeting resource visibility challenges in health care and other fields. But RTLS technology presents specific challenges related to potential interference disruption and ongoing maintenance concerns. In this session, learn how to invest in RFID, as well as how to create success criteria for an RFID hospital implementation and evaluate such a system from a technical standpoint.

Speaker:

Ray Lowe, Director Ministry Support/IS Operations, Providence Health Care Systems

Takeaway:

• Technical evaluation criteria for RTLS in a health-care setting, including applications, installation, interference and a business model
• An understanding of critical implementation factors, such as patient-care disruption during installation, scalability, infrastructure costs, system reliability, ease of use, maintenance and initial operating costs

Health-care facilities are faced with many choices when it comes to implementing an RFID asset-tracking system, including passive high-frequency (HF) and ultrahigh-frequency (UHF), active 455 MHz, Wi-Fi, Zigbee and ultra-wideband (UWB) systems, as well as ultrasound technology. In this session, leading experts will discuss key issues that health-care providers need to understand when making technology choices.

Moderator:

Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal LLC

Panelists:

Ray Lowe, Director Ministry Support/IS Operations, Providence Health Care Systems
Pankaj Sood, Founder and Manager, McMaster RFID Applications Lab

Commonly encountered electromagnetic (EM) environments have been found to affect the performance of some implantable medical devices. Such devices include cardiac pulse generators, neurostimulators, drug infusion pumps, and glucose and cardiac monitors. Adverse EM environmental effects (E3) include the undesired responses of these devices to the environments in which they must function. The growing use of RFID in public areas requires the same attention be given to E3 testing. In this session, hear a brief history of E3 testing for implantable medical devices, as well as a discussion of recent publications indicating the need for establishing RFID testing protocols for medical devices, and an update on a health-care initiative (HCI) to develop testing protocols—a collaboration between AIM Global, Met Labs and the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Speaker:

Ralph Herkert, Senior Research Engineer, Georgia Tech

One hospital in the Midwest is utilizing an RFID system to help track its inventory of cardiovascular stents, balloons, filter wires, thrombectomy devices and many other medical consumables within its six-room catheterization laboratory. Learn how the hospital employs the system to automatically track 1,600 items stored in 16 intelligent cabinets, ranging in value from approximately $100 to $2,500, and how the staff uses it to monitor expensive consumables.

When a 385-bed community health-care facility, located in a resort community in the South, wanted to efficiently track and distribute its on-site IV pumps, medicines and other everyday assets, it turned to radio frequency identification. Hear how the hospital chose the proper type of RFID and deployed a system to lower labor costs, while also providing a more consistent delivery schedule to hospital departments.

Radio frequency identification can be used in many applications within hospitals, from patient monitoring to asset tracking. The key to getting the most from your RFID investment is to build an infrastructure able to provide a near-term return on investment, while also enabling you to introduce new applications that can deliver additional benefits over time. In this session, learn how to create an RFID investment strategy that will pay off in both the short and long terms.

Speaker:

Mark Roberti, Founder and Editor, RFID Journal LLC