RFID systems for risk reduction in blood bags: a cost-benefit analysis

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology has gained increasing popularity in recent years, both in the field of industrial application and in the services sector. In the latter field, in particular, many applications in the area of hospital logistics have been recently developed. This paper concerns the application of RFID systems to the control of blood bags in hospitals. The work, focused on the economic aspects of the problem, is based on a model for the economic evaluation of RFID systems based on cost / benefit analysis. Both cases of application of HF and UHF frequencies, and different application scenarios were taken into account, based on the use of RFID in the entire transfusion loop or only to the part of it relative to the end user. The model was then tested and applied to an actual hospital reality of considerable importance from the point of view of blood transfusion. The results obtained in the different test cases were then further analysed through a sensitivity analysis in order to assess the model's response to changes in input parameters.