Wireless tagging in hospitals is 'inevitable'

Businesses peddling wireless tagging technologies - such as RFID chips - to the NHS and other healthcare providers will come up against plenty of resistance, but should not give up, according to a recent report.

There are ways to overcome the public's fears, according to a forthcoming report from UK consultancy Wireless Healthcare.

One is to point out the technology's benefits - which include providing safer, more efficient care to patients, saving money and giving patients more detailed information about their treatment, the report says.

Healthcare providers such as the NHS tend to resist technology such as wireless tagging because they believe healthcare cannot be automated and fear job losses.

But no one's looking to make a hospital akin to an automobile factory, the report says, just to automate certain processes and repetitive tasks.

Tagging systems could ensure, for example, that nurses wash their hands after dealing with a patient and that the correct medicines or blood type are given to each patient.

With the promise of automated records offered by the NHS's National Programme for IT, wireless tags could provide even more benefits as the information they hold about medications delivered or procedures performed could be integrated with the rest of a patient's record.

While jobs may be lost, Peter Kruger, senior analyst at Wireless Healthcare, said "the benefits are too great" to let that stop the technology from taking hold.

Though healthcare providers often say they are concerned wireless tagging will violate patient privacy, the report claims the technology could actually make hospital visits more pleasant for patients. Kruger believes patients will desire and even demand the detailed level of information about their care tags can provide.

"And if public providers such as the NHS don't meet patients' needs", said Kruger, "then there is scope for private operators to move in.".

Kruger pointed out that technology adoption is generally driven by what's convenient for the healthcare provider while "benefits for patients are continually overlooked". But, he added, "you can't deploy technology merely for healthcare provider - you have to deploy it for patients as well".

He sees the move toward automation in healthcare as inevitable, given that it has already happened in the manufacturing and financial services industry.

The US is ahead of the UK in terms of accepting wireless tagging, as the FDA has already approved the use of RFID for medical purposes and is calling for RFID labelling to be used in the pharmaceutical supply chain by 2007.

The report, Selling Wireless Tagging to the Healthcare Sector, is set to be published later this week and is available from the Wireless Healthcare website.